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EPOCH MEN. 






PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY 
EDINBURGH AND LONDON 




"In the azure canopy he saw the stars, no longer stationary, but floating 
along through immensity "—Epoch Men, Page 203. 
(Frontispiece.) 



EPOCH MEN, 

AND THE RESULTS OF THEIR 
LIVES. 



BY 



SAMUEL NEIL, 

ll 
AUTHOR OF " SHAKESPEARE l A BIOGRAPHY;" "THE YOUNG DEBATER," ETC. 



EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM P. NIMMO, 
1871. 









112/32- 



J> 



PREFATORY NOTE. 




jISTORY," says E. Bulwer-Lytton, "is rarely 
more than the Biography of great men." 
With this idea in view, the author of the 
following papers has attempted to narrate some of 
the more striking events of History, through the 
medium of the lives of the great men of each Epoch. 
The subjects have been chosen from various periods 
and countries, and from different ranks and pursuits. 
They exhibit forcibly, it is hoped, the power of per- 
sistent purpose in the world, and prove that there is 
ample scope in human life for the display of indivi- 
dual effort and energy. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

Charlemagne — Modern Europe. — a.d. 742-814, • 1 

chapter i. — prolusion, .... 3 
chapter ii. — charlemagne, his early life, times, 

and character, .... 9 

chapter iii. — his reign and labours, . . l6 

chapter iv. — the causes and results of events, 32 

Gregory VII. — The Papacy. — a.d. 1020-1085, . . 49 

Roger Bacon — Experimental Science. — a.d. 1214-1294, 89 

Dante — Nationality. — a.d. 1 265-1321, . . . 123 

Chaucer — English Literature. — a.d. 1328-1400, . 151 

Copernicus— Modern Astronomy. — a.d. 1473-1543, . 187 

Lord Clive — The Conquest of India. — a.d. 1725-17 74, 211 

James Watt— The Utilisation of Steam.— a.d. 1 736-1 819, 271 



Charlemagne — Modern Europe. 

A.D. 742-814. 



u There never ceases in this world of ours 

Work for the good and noble. God decides 
The issues and the limits of all powers. 

O'er history and life He, sole, presides 5 
He penetrates with organising force 

Epochs and institutions ; every change 
Receives from Him the order of its course ; 

And states derive their sovereignty and range* 
Creative conquest built old Empires up 

Which could not bear the moral analyst ; 
They filled the measure of their granted cup. 

Then God's true civiliser rose in Christ. 
States vivified by faith in Him are strong, 

And such a State was built by Charlemagne." 
— Z. U. Masilene. 



u Charlemagne laid the first solid foundation for a permanent system 
of Christian government and institutions." — Fred, von SchlegeL 



"The name of Charlemagne has come down to us as one of the 
greatest in history. Though not the founder of his dynasty, he has 
given his name both to his race and his age." — Guizot. 



CHAPTER I. 



PROLUSION. 




N the olden ages of the world the various forms of 
government arose singly — " at sundry times and 
in divers manners/' The patriarchal, the kingly, 
the sacerdotal, the oligarchic, and the democratic systems 
of sovereignty may not have manifested themselves in dis- 
tinct and chronological succession; but they did not develop 
themselves in parallel order, neither did they attempt to 
work together in harmony and union. The grand purpose 
of the period, included in the term, Ancient History, seems 
to have been to give rise to those differing schemes by 
which men may be governed, and by a process of "progress 
by antagonism" to raise each of these to its highest powei 
and noblest individual development. This purpose being 
fulfilled, the kind and degree of each being so tried, tested, 
and known, and each in its turn having failed to maintain 
pre-eminence, and produce the highest and holiest good to 
the people, a new problem arose — viz., How, by a due 
admixture of these, to secure the greatest possible amount 
of stability in government, and the highest possible state of 
civilisation in all classes of the people ? This integration 
and harmonious union of all the possible varieties of govern- 



4 Charlemagne. 

ment appears to us to have been and to be the legislative 
problem, if, indeed, it is not the life problem, of Modern 
History. Accordingly, we find that in passing from the 
records of ancient to those of modem times, the object of 
contest and dispute is changed. It is no longer the self- 
existent supremacy of any one form of government which is 
aimed at, but rather the degrees, the times, the manners, 
and the circumstances in which each shall be supreme, yet 
each subordinate in turn. Individual, continuous, and un- 
shared dominion is found to be impolitic, if not impossible, 
for any; and hence a system of collocation, mutually agreed 
upon for each, has become a desideratum. We believe that 
the true era of this change may be safely regarded as be- 
ginning with the Carlovingian dynasty, and as finding its 
articulate and definitive place in modern policy during the 
reign of Charlemagne. 

To make this evident, it will be advisable to throw back 
our thoughts into the past, and by a comprehensive review 
of the tendencies exhibited there, prove that his reign consti- 
tuted a true Epoch, and that he who led the van in its 
accomplishment imparted a new impulse to human life. 

Rome inherited from the great empires of pre-Christian 
times a knowledge of those forms of government which had 
influenced, combined, and divided the various political as- 
sociations or #?;zsociations of antiquity — the imperial mag- 
nificence of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, the theocratic or 
sacerdotal mysteries of Judea, the municipal and civic inde- 
pendence of Greece, and the military renown of Macedonia. 
By the conquest of Gaul and Germany a rude and hardy 
personal independence had been added to the experiences 
of the past; and now, on this vast stage, the grand drama 
of civilisation was to reach its prolusio, the curtain was to 



Early State of Modern Europe. 5 

fall at the close of a contest between the forces of Imperial- 
ism and Personality. 

The banks of the majestic Rhine were then most singular 
in the contrast of their inhabitants. Want and barbaric 
rudeness possessed the one, while wealth and all the dis- 
cipline and pomp of imperial civilisation occupied the other. 
The natural result of such a state was war. Disciplined 
skill for a time held the turbulent forces of barbarism in 
subjection and fear : at length, however, need gave birth to 
leagues and combinations, and well-knit confederacies of 
the Germanic barbarians were arranged, in which chieftain- 
hood speedily passed into kingship. The civil contentions 
in Rome during the third and fourth centuries afforded 
ample scope for disciplining those barbaric hordes in the 
arts and practices of war. The overthrow of the Mistress 
Empire of the world by Alaric, 405 a.d., gave unbounded 
licence to experiment and change in all things except such 
as the Church had managed to acquire the mastery of. 
Even the memories and traditions of the past were endang- 
ered in the inebriety of conquest ; but luckily (or shall we 
not, in preference, assert providentially ?) the greed of acqui- 
sition overpowered the bonds by which the aggressors had 
been held in union, and the divisions which ensued made 
it impossible to effect a thorough overthrow of all that 
deserved to be cherished in ancient civilisation. It is a 
singular illustration of the power of strong passions working 
in the souls of men intent on personal independence, that 
in all the contests of this period, the least united and the 
least advanced in the arts of life or the polity of nations 
were most successful in their efforts. The Goths vanquished 
the Romans, and in Gaul, the Franks, rude, restless, and 
loosely held together, eventually subdued the firmly con- 



6 Charlemagne. 

federated Goths and Burgundians. In the early part of the 
fifth century each Frankish town, territory, or band, had its 
petty and independent temporary chief. They had no 
common capital, no universally acknowledged head. The 
chieftaincy was the prize of the man most skilled in manag- 
ing other men ; he who could most advantageously plan and 
conduct schemes of plunder or projects for settlements ; he 
who could assemble around him the greatest number of 
roving bands, and subjugate them most entirely to his con- 
trolling will. Such a one was Clovis, the founder of the 
French monarchy. He was the chief of a small band of 
Franks settled at Tournay. By guile and perfidy he con- 
trived to entrap and overcome many of the rival chiefs of 
the Franks, often assassinating whole families in his jealous 
ambition. The Merovingian kings who succeeded him 
pursued much the same plan. Gross indulgence of the 
criminal passions and mutual murder thinned their race, and 
weakened it. Relationship became a cause of enmity, and 
seldom did a monarch live to see a son of age to succeed 
himself. Regencies first became frequent, then perpetual. 
The possession of a shadowy royalty could not content 
those who felt themselves intrusted with all the essential 
duties, responsibilities, and cares of kings. Usurpation 
transferred the name and title to those who had long worn 
the dignity and exercised the power. Pepin, the major- 
do7no of the palace, threw aside the hypocrite's pretensions, 
and claimed the kingdom by the tenure of power and pos- 
session. Childeric III. was dethroned, and France ex- 
changed a mock for a real monarch. 

The Franks, and indeed the Goths, in general, were not 
fitted for national life. They were accustomed to soldierly, 
but not to civic and municipal, restraints. It was requisite 



The Growth of Modem Europe. 7 

that they should be brought under national institutions, led 
within the scope of the magnificent imperial traditions of 
the mother-city of nations, and educated to united obedi- 
ence, action, and finance. To effect such purposes, the 
Western Empire must renew its youth, resume for a time its 
former vigour, and weld together, by the strong force of 
military prowess, the disjunct nationalities, or rather chief- 
taincies, which abounded in the misrule resulting from the 
fall of Rome. 

It may be observed, as a general law, that in the infancy 
of civilisation vast imperial organisations are necessary. 
Luxury riots in courts, and invention is bribed into activity. 
Each new pleasure, as it palls upon the court, is welcomed 
to the homes of the class below. The strong, the indepen- 
dent, and the dangerous, are drafted off into the army ; the 
weak are subjected to the mere will of their masters ; and 
the middle classes live on the bounty of the courts, the 
spoils of the army, or the gains of commerce. For a time 
these co-operate and co-exist. So long as a sovereign with 
a clear head and an energetic hand holds the government 
in his grasp, the latent elements of discord are repressed in 
their activity : but the vitality of self-interest at length asserts 
itself. If a w r eak monarch, a divided or disputed sover- 
eignty succeeds a strong, united, or uncontested one, class 
after class appears ready to try any change, in the hope 
that it will lead to betterment. The aspirants to dominion 
throw baits to each class, or at least to such classes as are 
powerful and clamorous enough to be annoying, and thus 
by natural processes of growth and decadence do vast em- 
pires advance to the maturity of extended rule, then dehisce^ 
for the production of other and younger nations. 

To compound, to blend, to amalgamate, all that was good 



8 Charlemagne. 

in the sublime organic governments of olden times with the 
youthful impetuosity, the hardy independence, the rude 
effervescence of personal being, and the undeterred experi- 
mentalism of modern times ; to suffuse the noble endurance 
and manly heroism of barbarism with the holy influences of 
civilisation, and to impregnate an effete civilisation with 
new life and energy, the Western Empire of modern Europe 
was essential. The hour came, and the man. The land- 
marks of civilisation had been swept away ; colossal crime 
infested Europe ; anarchy, confusion, and ignorance reigned 
over the territories of the Caesars. A steadfast and heroic 
man is wanted. Who is he who accepts the crown and 
government, resolved to quiet, by resolute and indomitable 
perseverance, the noisy wranglings of many classes and 
many kings % Charlemagne, the restorer of social order, 
letters, and rule. 




CHAPTER II. 



CHARLEMAGNE, HIS EARLY LIFE, TIMES, AND CHARACTER. 



HARLEMAGNE, the eldest legitimate son of 
Pefiin-le-bref, mayor of the palace under Childeric 
III., one of the Merovingian nominal kings of 
the Franks, was born April 2, 742 a.d. There is a con- 
siderable discordance among historians regarding the pre- 
cise place of his birth. Aix-la-Chapelle, Ingelheim, Carl- 
stadt, and Salzburg, have each been named as entitled to 
that honour. There is no sufficing proof of any of these 
assertions. All that can be regarded as certain is, that he 
was born somewhere near the banks of the Rhine, whither 
his mother, Bertha, daughter of Caribert, Count of Laon, 
had followed her husband, who was at this period in Aqui- 
tania, engaged in suppressing a revolt which was headed by 
the duke of that territory. As the civil contest then waging 
lasted for some years, Bertha and her young son must have 
passed a somewhat wandering life. In 744, when his father 
had gained the victory, they would return to court, and he 
would doubtlessly be brought up after the manner of the 
age, in the company of the young people whose parents 
held office near royalty or under the mayor, in the know- 
ledge and practice of all the military arts, and some of the 



xo Charlemagne. 

elements of civil polity. At this time, however, genius had 
withered, and learning was at the point of death. The im- 
perial schools in which the scions of the Roman nobility 
had received that culture which fitted them for the exercise 
of power, and enabled them to adorn society, were destroyed 
by the irruptions of the barbarians, and long years of ne- 
glect, discouragement, and opposition, had chased learning 
and literature into obscurity, where it lingered sicklily in 
grief and prostration. To the youth of Charles the chivalric 
accomplishments and the notes and exercises of war were 
well and thoroughly explained \ but the grace of letters, the 
refinement of thought, the means, the taste, the power, or 
the opportunity of reading, were almost wholly denied. 

We can form but an imperfect idea of a life from which 
the schoolmaster is excluded, or of the dense ignorance of 
the times when the priests of religion themselves, in too 
many instances, had sunk into deplorable machines, who 
uttered a round of uncomprehended worship, and had little 
or no acquaintance with the language of Roman literature 
and of Church legislation. Yet we can scarcely express re- 
gret that Charlemagne was not brought under the mental 
discipline to which youth is usually subjected, but that he 
spent his early years in the pursuits of the chase, of war, and 
of political intrigue. Had he been exposed to the former, 
his own mind and will would have been somewhat effemin- 
ated ; he would have lost the resolute, unresting, practical 
energy of his nature ; the breadth of theoretic thought, which 
would then have stretched before him, would have stayed 
his hand when the stroke required to be given; and the 
widening of the horizon would have weakened the intensity 
and clearness with which he saw and did the one thing 
that seemed best in any exigency. Had he been deprived 



Early Life and Training. 1 1 

of aught of the latter, he would have lacked the ready skill 
and the powerful influence which could curb and check, 
outwit and brave, resist and conquer danger, revolt, or op- 
position. We do not grieve, then, but rather rejoice, that, 
in his case, the practical and the real in life were the earliest 
educative influences amid which he grew up, and that the 
attractions and pleasures of scholarship were recognised by 
him as weapons of polity, as well as occasions of true and 
lasting enjoyment only in the latter part of a life whose first 
duty was to effect the inauguration of a new empire by the 
power of the sword, which should be afterwards established 
by the power of thought — an empire which should unite m 
itself power and intelligence. 

Pepin, Charlemagne's father, was a consummate politician 
and intriguant, as well as a notable warrior. He inherited 
the ambitious schemes of Pepin d'Heristal and Charles 
Martel, his grandfather and father, and doubtlessly educated 
his son in all the traditions of his house and lineage. They 
were the parties who introduced the fashion of shadowy and 
do-nothing royalty, a plan by which, without the nominal 
honours of regal state, they exerted its real powers, and yet 
escaped the odium of their own abuses of those powers. 
This scheme had at length produced its intended results; 
the regal power had been totally severed from the regal 
title, and the attentions and regards of aspiring courtiers were 
turned from the nominal to the virtual dispensers of place, 
patronage, and pay. Love, affection, and interest, had been 
diverted from the king to the mayor, and the time seemed 
ripe for a bold attempt to seize the nominal, as well as re- 
tain the real, sovereignty of the Frankish empire. The 
Church was greedy of power, and was already corrupted by 
a love of wealth, splendour, and rule. Pepin saw this, and 



1 2 Charlemagne. 

by a craftily framed question obtained the papal sanction 
to the moral legislation, which enacts that " it is better that 
he who exercises regal power should also possess the regal 
title." The sanction of the Pope having been gained to this 
axiom, Pepin speedily placed himself at the head of the dis- 
affected nobility, and by a cunningly-devised and well- worked 
revolution, dethroned Childeric III., and "reigned in his 
stead. n This happened in 750, when Charlemagne was about 
nine years of age. He who was but a courtier s son had 
now become a crown prince, and his mother and sister were 
ennobled, in fact, by the success of Pepin. Though this 
was accomplished, however, there is little doubt that great 
art and care required to be exercised, lest those lately ac- 
quired honours should lead to the manufacture of new 
enemies and new rebellions. Even in childhood, therefore, 
Charlemagne would be trained to practise a conciliating 
policy, and to conceal deep-laid and boldly-planned schemes 
by an artless demeanour and blandness of manner. In 
March 752, Archbishop Boniface, the apostle of Germany, 
solemnly, in the name and by the authority of the Pope, con- 
secrated and anointed Pepin King of the Franks, at Soissons, 
the very place where, two hundred and sixty-six years be- 
fore, Clovis, the first of the Merovingians, by a victory over 
Syagrius, the Roman provincial governor, established the 
Frankish sovereignty. Of this pageant Charlemagne and 
Carloman, with their sister Gisla, would form no unattractive 
part, and the prince-made youth would observe, with keen 
tact and evident relish, the potency of ceremonial pomp. 
A subsequent lesson would teach this even more impressively. 
The wise courage of Pepin having subdued opposition and 
silenced discontent, — having consolidated his power and 
vanquished his foes, — had time left him to be courteous, 



Early Life and Circumstances. 13 

affable, and kingly. The popedom at this period had got 
enmeshed in great difficulty. Aistulph, King of Lombardy, 
had invaded and conquered Ravenna, and now sought tri- 
bute and submission from the reigning pontiff. Such a hu- 
miliation was in nowise compatible with the schemes of the 
pontificate. Pope Stephen III. bethought him, in this 
extremity, of the Rome-sanctioned usurper of the dominion 
of the Franks, and besought his friendly aid. This Pepin 
granted, on condition that he, the Pope, should re-anoint 
him king, as well as baptize and consecrate his two sons. 
Stephen accordingly crossed the Alps in 753, and sojourned 
at Minister, where, during the winter of that year, Pepin held 
his court. Here Pepin was re-consecrated ; here his children 
were baptized, and declared to be the only legitimate succes- 
sors to the throne and dominion of Pepin. On this occasion 
the Pope lifted the crown prince from the font with his own 
hands, so specially did he desire to mark his favour to the 
new dynasty. There can be little doubt that Charlemagne, 
in the spring of the following year, 754, accompanied his 
father in his march towards Italy. Pepin, having crossed 
the Alps with a numerous army, encountered Aistulph, King 
of Lombardy, near Susa, and overcame him. This done, he 
compelled him, by treaty, to resign all claim to sovereignty 
over the see of Rome, to deliver to him the Exarchate of 
Ravenna, and all the cities he had seized belonging to the 
Roman dukedom, whose powers the Popes exercised. Ais- 
tulph agreed, but, shortly afterwards, infringed the conven- 
tion ; then Pepin returned, severely chastised his duplicity, 
and made a formal grant of his conquests to the Pope and 
his successors in the apostolic chair. The Pope having 
sanctified his usurpation by the forms of religion, he sancti- 
fied the Pope's domination by the power of the sword. A fair 



14 Charlemagne. 

and goodly exchange, equally advantageous to each of the 
contracting parties. On Charlemagne, of course, these forms 
of policy could not be lost. As Pepin intended to convey 
the empire to his children, he would make a point of sedu- 
lously instructing them in all the diplomatic arts of the age, 
in all the strategies by which power might be gained and 
retained, and in all the punctilios and observances by which 
outward homage may be paid, while the realities of dominion 
are laid hold of and appropriated. 

The renown of Pepin speedily rang through the world. 
As he seemed dangerous, his neighbouring princes sought 
to propitiate him by gifts, favours, and treaties. Even Con- 
stantine, Emperor of the East, observing the rise of a rival, 
found it politic to send ambassadors, and to open negotiations 
with him. By this act, Charlemagne was brought into con- 
nexion with the magnificent traditional despotism of the East, 
learned its method, and became acquainted with its practices. 

Deprived, as Charlemagne was, by the necessities of his 
times, of any denned, intentional, mental training, we can only 
form an idea of what his early life must have been, by con- 
sidering the circumstances amid which he lived, the history 
enacted before his eyes, and shedding its influences into his 
mind. We know little or nothing directly of his "youth's 
doings," and can only estimate, from what we know was 
passing around him, the nature of the thoughts and aspira- 
tions which were growing up within him, training him for 
empire, and fitting him for working out, however unwittingly, 
the purposes of Providence. Hence, though we are relating 
no definite and well-ascertained fact regarding the early 
years of Charlemagne's life, we are tracing the progress of 
that practical education which made him what he was, and 
led him to do what he did. 



Home and Married Life. 1 5 

We have seen that he was well versed and trained in 
military and chivalric arts, in the manoeuvres of diplomacy, 
and in the practices of government ; that he had seen court, 
camp, and church life ; that he had been specially taught 
to look upon himself as destined to rule ; that he had been 
introduced to an acquaintance with forms of etiquette and 
systems of sovereignty of various kinds, despotic, sacerdotal, 
kingly, and ducal; and that he had been practically instructed 
to use any or all of these, whichever seemed most likely to suit 
him at the time, for the elaboration of his own purposes, 
and the defeat of the intentions of others. More than this, 
he had enjoyed in the love of his mother Bertha, the affec- 
tion of his sister Gisla, the fraternal competition of his 
brother Carloman, and the earnest counsels of his father, a 
considerable share, such as it was, of that too uncommon 
blessing — home education. To be sure, some portion of 
this instruction, and that which belongs to the sacredest ele- 
ments of human life most of all, was not by any means of 
the best kind. We may specially instance Charlemagne's 
low estimate of marital relations. He had espoused, while 
yet young, a lady of good family, named Huniltrude. But 
when Pepin saw that the Lombardine king could only be 
managed by a marriage connexion, he advised, and his 
mother Bertha joined in the advice, that he should contract 
a politic marriage with the daughter of Desiderius, who had 
then become King of Lombardy. Desira did not relish the 
position in which she was thus placed, and the union was, 
as might have been expected, unhappy. Pepin died in 768, 
and Charlemagne became king. A new era began in his 
life. The hero-king and scholar had a work to perform. 
We shall follow him, in the next chapter, to empire and 
greatness. 



CHAPTER III. 



HIS REIGN AND LABOURS. 




[HE empire over which Pepin had borne sway, and 
to which Charlemagne ultimately succeeded, — 
for in this place we need say nought of the brief 
and eventless co-reign of his brother Carloman, — was very 
extensive. It consisted of three states, — viz., (i.) Aus-irasia, 
or the Eastern Empire, comprising within itself the north- 
east of Gaul and the south of Germany, so much, at least, 
as lies between the Tyrol and the Thuringerwald, the Rhine* 
and the Inn. (2.) Neustria, or the Western Empire, which 
included the north-west of Gaul, between the Waal and the 
Loire. (3.) Burgundy, or the Southern Empire, in which 
were comprehended Provence and parts of Aquitania, Swit- 
zerland, and Alsace. In other words, it extended from the 
Pyrenees to the Rhine, and from the English Channel to the 
Noric Alps. The monarch of such a territory could not but 
be, in the then unsettled state of the European powers, im- 
portant as an ally, formidable as an enemy, and worthy of 
jealous watching as either. Northern Europe was, as yet, 
only the cradle of valiant emigrant races, unconsolidated 
under any form of government except that of military 



His Accession to the Throne. 1 7 

leaders. The south-west peninsula was peopled by a tribe 
of Visigoths, who zealously held out against the farther pro- 
gress of the Saracens, whose religious ardour had carried 
them into Spain. Italy was, as it has too long unfortunately 
been, a divided country; the Longobards possessed the 
upper part, the Romans the middle, and the Greeks the 
lower portion and Sicily. Rome itself was in a state of 
semi-anarchy, the Pope, the senate, and the people being 
at variance with each other, at the same time that Charle- 
magne held the rank of a Roman patrician, wielded the 
war-legions of France, and was linked by marriage with the 
Longobards, the fiercest enemies of Rome. In Austria and 
Hungary the Avari, effeminate through luxury and indo- 
lence, had their treasure cities encircled by walls and moats, 
but undefended by strong arms or stout hearts. Eastern 
Germany was inhabited by various disunited and often con- 
tentious tribes of Sclaves and Vandals ; in the north of Ger- 
many, the Saxons, a free and manly race, dwelt under the 
government of self-elected chiefs, and worshipped in the 
primeval forests their fathers' ancient gods ; but South Ger- 
many was considerably under his dominion, and, with the 
exception of the Bavarians, seemed inclined to take kindly 
to the foreign yoke. England was a secluded and unin- 
fluential island, subject to the incursions of the Danes, and 
not yet harmonised and united into one kingdom, under 
one king. There was no great empire near him, no for- 
midable power around ; for the Greek empire, although it 
still existed, was, at Charlemagne's accession, great in name 
only, not in reality ; it was no longer the empire of Con - 
stan tine, but an effete life-simulating State. 

Such, in brief terms, was the condition of Europe when 
Charlemagne, in his twenty-sixth year, succeeded to the 

B 



1 8 Charlemagne. 



<3 ■ 



throne of his father, as before stated, in a.d. 768. At Pepin's 
death, the empire was divided between Charlemagne and 
Carloman, the former being sovereign of Austrasia and Neu- 
stria, the latter of Burgundy. The brothers had married 
sisters, daughters of Desiderius, king of the Longobards. 
Charlemagne had, however, repudiated his wife, and her 
father had immediately resented the rejection of his daugh- 
ter by exciting and encouraging revolt in his son-in-law's 
kingdom. Some of the nobles were, of course, anxious to 
be independent, and this favoured the design of Desiderius. 
The seeds of sedition are easily sown ; and though no rising 
of importance took place in Charlemagne's allotment, the 
nobles and people of Aquitania made an attempt to throw 
off their allegiance to the empire. Carloman besought the 
aid of his brother, which was readily granted, as it might 
read a lesson to his own nobility of the power and deter- 
mination with which he would resent any infringement of 
the regal dignity, any neglect of a subject's duty. While 
Charlemagne was in the field his brother fled, and left him 
to maintain the conflict alone against superior odds. The 
valour with which he pursued his purpose, and the firmness 
with which he continued the dubious contest, convinced the 
nobility of the whole empire that he possessed military skill, 
energy, and resources sufficient, not only to curb revolt, but 
to extend conquest. Nor was he slow in perceiving that, 
on his part, some means should be adopted by which the 
nobles might be employed in foreign war, rather than in the 
fomenting of domestic discord. 

On Carloman s death, in a.d. 771, he was invited to ac- 
cept of the sovereignty of that portion of his late father's 
possessions, of which he would doubtless have made himself 
master, even though uninvited. Carloman's wife fled, with 



Discord, War, and Enmity. 19 

her two sons, to her father ; and now the court of the Lon- 
gobards contained two women whose wrongs called for ven- 
geance on the head of Charlemagne. Desiderius set himself 
to gratify at once their anxious thirst and his own ambi- 
tion in a somewhat circuitous manner. Pope Stephen IV., 
who had been opposed to the union of the regal families of 
Pepin and Desiderius, died in the early part of 772, and 
was succeeded by Pope Adrian I. Desiderius seized the 
opportunity of this new accession to demand from the 
Popedom the anointment of Carloman's two sons as the true 
and real heirs to their father's kingdom, threatening w T ar as 
the consequence of a refusal. Adrian did refuse, advised 
Charlemagne of the course pursued by his father-in-law, and 
sought help to maintain the papal authority, and to mar the 
designs of his enemy, whose defeat would, of course, serve 
Charlemagne's interest as well as his own. Charlemagne 
promised that as soon as possible he would devote himself 
to the humiliation of the haughty claimant of his dominion, 
and the insubordinate enemy of the Pope in Upper Italy. 

Meanwhile, however, he had provided full occupation 
for himself, his nobles, and his armies, by declaring war 
against the Saxons. This he did at an imperial diet, held 
at Worms in 772, where he enlarged upon the predatory 
character of the Saxons, the shamefulness of the heathen 
worship they practised, and the merit which would be due 
to the Frankish empire if they could be converted to Chris- 
tianity. Conversions were then more frequently made by 
the sword of a temporal king than by " the sword of the 
Spirit ; ^ as if a religion which could be donned to order 
might not as easily be doffed by a countermand from a 
stronger power. Having declared war ostensibly to bring 
the Saxons under the dominion of "the true and saving 



20 Charlemagne. 

faith," he made his first irruption into their territories about 
the middle of that same year. It was a short, successful, 
and briskly conducted campaign. Leaving Worms, he 
entered Hesse, advanced to the banks of the Weser, took 
Eresberg, [Statberg,] destroyed the statue of Irmin, an 
object peculiarly venerable in the eyes of the Saxons, and 
compelled them to conclude a peace, giving twelve chiefs 
as their hostage for its fulfilment. 

At the very moment of his victory, ominous tidings 
reached him from Rome. The plot on which Desiderius 
had resolved had begun to effect its purpose ; the Pope be^ 
ing embroiled, had asked Charlemagne for such help as he 
needed, and as it was easy to see that it was his own quar- 
rel forced upon a third party, he could not refuse. Girding 
up his loins, therefore, he determined upon graciously aid- 
ing the Pope to maintain his supremacy, at the same time 
that he would settle his own dispute with his father-in-law, 
and might mayhap extend his own influence, if not his own 
dominion, in the Italian peninsula. 

Desiderius, on hearing of the hostile approach of Charle- 
magne, — who, having hurried from Germany, had crossed 
the Alps by the pass of Susa, and entered Italy, — resolved 
to employ tactics more than valour in the attainment of his 
end. He accordingly retreated towards Pavia, and fortified 
himself there, in the hope that sickness, scarcity, and im- 
patience would cause all the evils of a defeat to his enemy. 
Charlemagne, however, had no notion of being so readily 
fatigued \ so, leaving orders for the preservation of a strict 
blockade, he set out to attend the Easter festival at Rome, 
a.d. 774. There he was received by the Pope with the 
highest honour and the most lavish sycophancy. In return, 
he confirmed the gift of the Exarchate of Ravenna and the 



Early Difficulties. 2 1 

Pentapolis, which Pepin his father had made to the Pope, 
and obtained, on his part, the right of confirming the elec- 
tions to the papal chair. These things having been ar- 
ranged, Charlemagne returned to Pavia, which soon after 
capitulated, and Desiderius, being made prisoner, was im- 
mured in the monastery of Corvey, in France, where he, 
not long thereafter, died. The conqueror claimed the 
Longobardian crown, and annexed its territories to his own 
dominions. 

While Charlemagne was employed in Italy, the Saxons, 
presuming upon his finding occupation there, invaded his 
empire. Calling a diet at Duren, near Aix-la-Chapelle, he 
decided upon proceeding against them at once, made an 
incursion beyond the Weser, and thoroughly discomfited 
them for a time. No sooner was this matter somewhat set- 
tled, than he required to repair to Lombardy, where his 
viceroy, Duke Rotgand, had revolted. This insurrection 
he quelled almost in the hour of its birth — so sudden and 
energetic were the measures adopted by him — and he imme- 
diately set out again to Saxony, driving the inhabitants be- 
fore him, compelling submission, and demanding promises of 
adhesion to Christianity. At this time he built a fortress on 
the Lippe, where many of the Saxons consented to be bap- 
tized. So well had he overrun the country, that in 777, 
the majority of the people had pledged their allegiance, 
and he was able to hold the meeting of his warriors ( Chajnp 
de Mai) in Paderborn. Here he received as petitioners the 
governors of the Spanish cities of Saragossa and Huesca, 
who sought protection from the tyranny of the Saracen 
King Abderam. He hated, although — perhaps we should 
say because — he imitated, the Islamites, and was much re- 
joiced at finding a plausible cause of offence. He declared 



2 2 Charlemagne. 

war against them, and expressed his determination to use 
their own, weapon of conversion — the sword — upon them- 
selves. Many independent Christian chiefs attached them- 
selves to his standard, and having crossed the Pyrenees, he 
in a short time, 778, subjugated the whole country as far as 
the Ebro, which he thereafter adopted as the march or 
boundary of the Frankish empire. It was on his return 
from this expedition that the ambuscade of Roncesvalles, so 
famous in legend and song, occurred. While the main 
army, like a huge serpentine monster, wound its way 
through the defiles of the Pyrenees, the rear-guard became 
disjoined from it, and was mercilessly massacred. The 
hero of Ariosto — Roland — the nephew of Charlemagne, the 
Warden of Brittany, together with many of the nobles of 
the empire, fell that day, and have had their names em- 
balmed in the lays of the troubadours and the romances of 
later times.* It can scarcely be said that this expedition 
was, on the whole, a decided success, while its fatal termina- 
tion saddened Charlemagne's heart, and dispirited his nobles. 
But " uneasy is the head that wears a crown." Wittekind, 
the celebrated Saxon leader, — who had fled, dismayed by 
the prowess and skill of the armies of Charlemagne, — had 
returned from his refuge in the Danish court, and had re- 
excited his compatriots to renew their attempts to avoid the 
yoke of the Frankish King ; and several " passages of arms" 
had taken place between the nobles of France and the chiefs 
of Saxony, in which the former were seldom victorious. Ex- 
asperated at last, when, in 782, the latter had despoiled the 
whole country as far as Cologne, Charlemagne set out him- 

* See Pulci's Morgante Maggiore ; Boiardo's Orlando Inamorata ; 
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso ; Merivale's Orlando in Roncesvalles in 
u Poems," Vol. ii. &c. &c. 



Domestic Troubles. 23 

self again, with the design of securing the total extirpation 
of these stubborn Pagans ; and after several campaigns, so 
harassed and assailed them, that they again promised sub- 
mission, and he unwillingly granted peace, taking the pre- 
caution, however, of erecting a chain of fortresses along the 
banks of the Elbe, as points of strength and resort in case 
of another rebellion. 

Indulging the hope of security which these proceedings 
had a tendency to excite, and desirous of surrounding him- 
self with vassal kings likely to submit to his orders, and pro- 
tect the outskirts of the empire, he set off to Rome with 
Louis and Pepin, his two sons by his second wife, to have 
them consecrated sovereigns of Aquitania and Italy. This 
was done. But Charlemagne had another son Pepin, by 
his first wife, who did not relish this supplantment, and so 
far resented it, as to head a conspiracy against his father ; 
this was, however, discovered before any overt act had been 
attempted, and Pepin (the elder) was consigned to the 
living grave of a monastery, in which he ended his days. 

The Saxons had no great reverence for treaties when the 
power of enforcement seemed to be wanting. While the 
governors of Saxony were met upon Mount Suntel, near the 
Weser, to organise an excursion against the Sorbians, who 
had carried off some booty in a foray, the Saxons fell upon 
them, and destroyed almost the whole army assembled there. 
Charlemagne's patience was exhausted ; rage and fury over- 
came prudence, and he burst into the country, laid it deso- 
late far and wide, and caused 4500 imprisoned Saxons to be 
massacred near Verden-on-the-Aller. For a time despair 
paralysed the foe ; but gradually the voice of vengeance was 
heard screaming its sibillations in the ear, and rage and 
madness urged them on to make one last great effort for 



24 Charlemagne. 

freedom, revenge, religion, and victory. In 783, the entire 
strength of the tribes was simultaneously united for this 
final and desperate affray. An engagement took place at 
Detmold, which ended doubtfully; but in a second encounter, 
at Hase in Osnaburg, the gods of battle decided so clearly 
in favour of Charlemagne, that the leaders, Wittekind and 
Alboin, accepted the omen, and submitted. They even 
took an oath that they would appear in France to be bap- 
tized ; and accordingly, at Attigny, Wittekind and his wife 
Gera, were introduced to the multitude of the faithful, Charle- 
magne himself being sponsor. But the lesson he had learned 
of their infidelity made Charlemagne distrustful, and he de- 
ported great bands of Saxons from the neighbourhood of the 
Elbe to the interior of the Frankish territories, thus securely 
producing that division which is weakness. At the same 
time, he displayed his own uprightness and consistency by 
taking means for the evangelisation of the conquered coun- 
try, by appointing prelates over certain districts, and devel- 
oping a scheme of Christian institutions through the whole 
of Saxony, that the people might learn, not only to serve 
Charlemagne, but also to worship Christ 

Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, and brother-in-law to Charle- 
magne, being married to Luitberga, a daughter of Desi- 
derius, having been guilty of treasonous practices, by con- 
niving at the incursions of the Saxons, and privily exciting 
the Avari to revolt, Charlemagne invaded the ducal province, 
defeated the soldiery, captured Tassilo, and brought him, in 
787, for trial, before a diet of the great lords of the empire, 
met at Ingelheim, one of Charlemagne's own court cities. 
He was condemned to death, but pardoned by Charlemagne, 
on condition that he and his son Theodore should retire to 



His Gra?id Desims. 2> 

a monastery, then the usual retreat of the unsuccessful, for 
the remainder of their natural lives. 

In Lower Italy the Emperor made such an impression, 
that Arechis, Duke of Benevento, acknowledged him as his 
superior, and consented to do feudal service to him within, 
and a league around his own sovereignty ; and, as a reward 
for this voluntary humility, Arechis w T as graciously permitted 
to do homage by deputy at Salerno, instead of in Germany. 

In a life of continuous bustle, activity, intrigue, and con- 
tention, we find Charlemagne bearing himself in all points 
heroically, and exhibiting personal greatness, both by the 
prowess of his arm, and by the swift decisiveness of his 
judgment. Bold, rapid thought, followed by instantaneous 
and effective action ; wise hardihood and bravery, as well 
as a keen perception of ways and means ; a stern potency of 
will, and a fine relish for honour and courage, seem to dis- 
tinguish him, and mark him out as one destined to be 
enduringly great. Now he is almost crowned with success 
— the effectual working out of the grand creative idea of his 
epoch, viz., the union and concentration of all the Western 
nation into one Christianised confederacy. Will the time 
yet come when national homage shall re-echo the thought 
of his own soul, and receive him as worthy of the "All hail !" 
of Christendom 1 

After twenty years spent in almost uninterrupted warfare, 
a breathing time of peace was not only much required, but, 
one might almost say, well worked for. In 790, this was 
for the first time possible. In this same year he seems first 
to have seriously reflected on and determined about his 
future purposes. The grand design of a world empire, 
which the traditions of ancient Rome, the lives of Constan- 



Charlemagne, 



<s' 



tine, of the Ostrogothic Theodore, and of his own ancestor, 
Charles Martel, suggested, seems to have entered with per- 
sistent and thoroughly considered force into the plans he 
now laid before himself. At this very period, the sovereignty 
of the Eastern Empire was held by Irene, a bold, ambitious, 
unscrupulous woman, possessed of great powers of fascina- 
tion, of intense energy of mind, wonderful administrative 
talents, and inspired by a perfect madness for intrigue. 
About the same time as Charlemagne had been contending 
for the interests of his empire against the Saracens, she was 
also employed in repulsing their encroachments. Commu- 
nity of object led to the entertainment of ambassadorial 
relations. Irene proposed a union of the Eastern and 
Western Empires by the marriage of her children with those 
of Charlemagne. Charlemagne felt little disinclined to ac- 
cede to the proposal. But Irene's ambition increased with 
her success; she deposed her son, assumed the imperial power, 
and then, as an empress in her own right, suggested that 
in their own persons the union should be effected. Ne- 
gotiations were actually entered into for the accomplishment 
of this design, when Nicephorus, the head treasurer of the 
Eastern Empire, originated a revolt, which resulted in Irene's 
deposition; and neither Charlemagne's policy nor love seems 
to have incited him to take part in favour of the almost 
bride-elect of his power. Perhaps he thought that when 
divided the empire might be acquired by a less inconvenient 
process. 

Perhaps, as an excuse for his ungallant desertion of Irene's 
cause, he carved out labour for his own armies, by marching 
against the Avari, to avenge himself on them for the incur- 
sions by which they had disturbed the early portion of his 
reign. He might also reckon, that by having his soldiery 



Policy at Home and A broad. 2 7 

engaged near the rebellious empire, he could take advantage 
of any circumstance which appeared likely to favour his 
aspirations after universal dominion. The Franks advanced 
on the south bank of the Danube, the Saxons and other 
feudatory tribes on the north, whilst a flotilla on the river 
itself, bore himself, his generals, his body-guard, and per- 
sonal retainers. The mere spectacle of the immense masses 
thus arrayed against them terrified the Avari into flight, and 
their nine treasure-cities became his, without even the shadow 
of resistance. 

It was in this expedition that Charlemagne conceived, 
and instantly began to work out, the grand idea of uniting 
the Baltic and the North Sea with the Black Sea and the 
Mediterranean, by the construction of a gigantic canal 
between the Maine and the Danube, a project rich in its 
promises of utility to Europe ; but the difficulty of the work, 
and the want of skill in his soldier-workmen, as well as 
unfavourable weather, led to the abandonment of the 
scheme, and Germany has not yet found a means of com- 
pleting it, or even of producing a substitute. 

The Saxons, disliking the forced labour, the long marches, 
and the protracted expeditions in which Charlemagne 
engaged, mutinied and revolted. This disturbed his plans. 
Leaving the vanquishment of the Avari to his generals, he 
set out to suppress the risings in Saxony, and to superin- 
tend the forcible transplantation of their tribes to other por- 
tions of his empire. His generals effected their part, and 
Charlemagne, by his judicious system of colonization, suc- 
ceeded in bringing the turbulent Saxons to submission, and 
even, in some measure, to contentment ; for he permitted 
them still to retain, as far as possible, their old traditionary 
customs, their laws, and municipal government, ennobled 



2 8 Cha rlentagne. 

their own leaders, and attached them to him by distributions 
of booty as well as assignments of land. These gifts, how- 
ever, he made personal and not hereditary and thus retained 
in his own hand the power of ejection, and consequently of 
punishment, in the event of any cause being given for 
displeasure. 

The reality of western empire was now his, and he longed 
to bear a name by which that reality might be indicated. 
But his friend and co-labourer in the extension and consoli- 
dation of his empire, Pope Adrian I., died in 795, and a 
new Pope, Leo III., required to be managed, and humoured, 
and patronised, into consenting, or at least assenting, to his 
wish. Luckily for his purpose, a revolt arose in Rome, the 
holy father was maltreated, and he fled to the court of 
Charlemagne at Paderborn for protection. Charlemagne 
not only received him gladly and kindly, but also promised 
to punish his assailants. This promise he fulfilled in a.d. 
800. At the magnificent festival of the church on Christ- 
mas of that same year, as Charlemagne knelt at the high 
altar, the Pontiff brought forth an imperial crown, and 
much to Charlemagne's apparent surprise, placed it on his 
head, saying, " Charles Augustus, crowned by the Almighty, 
the great and peace-bringing Emperor of Rome. All hail 
and victory ! n This greeting the multitude repeated after 
him, while the Pope knelt before him as the regent of true 
religion. The height of his ambition was now gratified, 
and even Nicephorus I. acknowledged him as his co-equal 
— the Emperor of the West. The Saxon kings of England, 
and the caliphs of Bagdad, recognised him by embassage, 
and in the magic of a new name, rights, dignities, prece- 
dency, and authority were seized, which did not enter into 
the logic of the ceremony. Caesar was re-established in 



His Ambition and Success. 29 

Charlemagne. So much importance did he attach to the 
new title — so much did he regard as underlying its adop- 
tion — that he commanded all his subjects above twelve 
years of age to renew their oaths of allegiance to his person 
and dynasty. 

The extension of his kingdom towards Bohemia; the 
consolidation and protection of its eastern boundary; the 
fortification of the coast-line of his extensive dominions, so 
as to enable him to repel the invasions of the Normans and 
Danes ; and the establishment of political relationships with 
other powers, now occupied much of his energy and thought. 
The general improvement and elevation of his people, the 
extension of commerce, the establishment of new and more 
equitable laws, the promotion of education, the furtherance 
of science, the purification of the church, and the internal 
regulations of his empire, also received much attention. 

In the midst of all his activity, all his planning and schem- 
ing, all his exertions in the combined characters of monarch 
and statesman, the great grief of death broke into his family. 
In 810, his son Pepin, King of Italy, died, and in 811, his 
other son Charles, who was his constant confidant and as- 
sistant in all his manifold undertakings, and who had thus 
become the centre of many hopes, died also ; leaving of his 
legitimate sons only Louis, surnamed Le Debomtaire, the 
weakest and least promising, alive : his eldest son being, as 
we have said, immured within monastic walls. 

Charlemagne, in his prime, was of kingly presence. His 
iron cuirass shielded a capacious chest, and brawny arms 
swung from his broad shoulders. His stalwart frame was 
surmounted by a round head, whose iron-grey locks bore the 
mark of his helmet His cheerful face was lit up by full 
bright eyes; and his features, though worn with war and 



30 Charlemagne. 

care, were knit together by a stern will when occasion re- 
quired ; while his shrill voice could employ the whole va- 
riety of intonation in which love, friendship, and sovereignty 
can be expressed. He was capable of intense emotion, — - 
bursts of grief and fits of passion. His temper was readily 
chafed, but his will was not easily changed by obstacles. 
Even the habit of empire aided the impression of kingliness 
which his presence produced. But the inroads of death, 
the effects of time, the hidden workings of disease, the 
undermining influences of care, and a growing sense of lone- 
liness, began to disorganise the sinewy body and to weaken 
the strong mind of Charlemagne. Feeling made him realise 
the feebleness of flesh, and the untrustworthiness of life. 
Hence, in 813, feeling the gradual on-creeping of senility, 
he named Louis his colleague in the Empire, and nominated 
his grandson Bernard, King of Italy. On the Sabbath in 
which he called his son Louis to the co-emperorship, he 
publicly exhorted him, in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
regarding the duties of a good sovereign, conjured him to 
love his people, and to labour and pray for their welfare and 
advancement ; at the same time showing his independence 
of the pontifical power, by commanding Louis to take the 
crown from the altar, and place it on his own head. There- 
after Charlemagne presented the self-crowned Louis to the 
Franks as their future Emperor. The act of the venerable 
old man received the unanimous sanction of the public 
voice. 

After the part he took in the magnificent spectacle of the 
coronation of his son, Charlemagne retired from the public 
performance of the duties of sovereignty, fixing his residence 
at Aix-la-Chapelle. Not long thereafter he was seized with 
pleurisy. He had never before been subjected to illness, 



His Illness and Death. 31 

and had a contemptuous distrust of drugs. Ke rejected 
medical aid, and his body, now weakened by age and exer- 
tion, succumbed to the power of disease. On the 28th of 
January 814, he felt the certain premonitions of death. 
Raising his right hand with characteristic energy and im- 
petuosity, despite of emaciation and exhaustion, he piously 
crossed himself on the forehead, the chest, and the feet ; 
then stretching himself out, clasping his arms over his breast, 
and closing his own eyes, he murmured, " Now, Lord, into 
Thy hands I commit my spirit ;" and with this semi-sighed 
prayer, he yielded himself up to the conqueror of all, even 
the greatest of men — Death. On that very day, his body 
being thoroughly cleansed, laid out, and embalmed, he was 
carried, amid lamentation and tears, to the vault of the 
church of Aix-la-Chapelle, and there, being dressed in his 
imperial robes, having a piece of the original (?) cross of 
Christ placed on his head, an open Bible on his knee, and 
his sceptre and shield at his feet, he was put in a marble 
chair. The vault was then completely filled with frankin- 
cence, balms, spices, and costly scent-giving herbs and gums, 
closed, and sealed up. Over this sepulchre an arch was 
erected, which bore these words as an inscription : — " Here 
repose the mortal remains of Charles, the great and orthodox 
Emperor, who gloriously enlarged, and for forty-seven years 
happily governed, the Empire of the Franks." 









SSiSi 






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W^S&ZA 


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CHAPTER IV. 



THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF EVENTS. 




II^^IJNCIENT civilisation was wanting in spirituality- 
religiousness. It attained its acme when the Ro- 
man Empire had concentrated under its own do- 
minion the whole culture of the ages, and had developed to 
their utmost all those principles of government which operate 
by external pressure on the subject, and derive their autho- 
rity from force rather than conviction. Modern civilisation is 
altogether distinct, especially in its primal element, viz., 
Christian culture. The former made men fear, reverence, 
and obey, the might and majesty of law ; the latter makes 
man " a law unto himself." There is therefore a vigour, 
dignity, and spontaneity in modern national life, which was 
completely w r anting in earlier states of citizenship. The 
one vital defect of ancient times being supplied, there arose 
also a necessity for amalgamating and intertexturing the 
civic life of former ages with the religiousness and conscien 
tiousness of the new culture. Fortunately for humanity, the 
realm of antique culture was under one sovereignty, so that at 
once the possibility and the practicability of proselytism was 
provided for. Apostolic zeal and Christian energy carried 
the new thought-seed of the gospel widely and freely through 



His Work and Mission, 33 

the length and breadth of civilised society. At first, like all 
new truths, it assumed the destructive form, and entered 
into contest with the old and the .effete. Conservatism rose 
in arms, resisted, persecuted, and — failed. Antagonism de- 
veloped the strength of the new principles of action and 
life, and proselytism was exchanged for predominance. That 
which had been foreign, even alien, attained mastery, and 
by an intricate and singular concourse of circumstances, ex- 
changed the prison-houses, persecution, and contempt, of 
its early years, for might, dominion, and homage. So far 
the work seemed to speed well, and to promise a favourable 
issue. But whosoever shall look narrowly into the causes of 
these eventful phenomena, will not fail to observe that this 
also became an external and authoritative power, instead of 
an inward, personally effective, moral influence, and there- 
fore could not then, and so manifested, fulfil all the purposes 
of God. It was needful that a spiritual empire should arise, 
not seated in Constantinople or Rome only, but in each 
human soul. This grand theocratic republic, it seems, could 
not advisably assert itself until all possible forms of incorpo- 
ration with, or imitation of, past forms of polity had been 
attempted. Hence there arose a need-be for the Christian 
empire of Constantine, and the Gregorian attempt to estab- 
lish a ruling Papacy. And not these only, but, as we believe, 
the bold and gorgeous monotheistic imposture of Mahomet, 
whose mission, among other mightier issues, it was, to exhi- 
bit the power of the sword to subjugate without subduing, 
to vanquish without convincing, to compel outward con- 
formity without a reform of the inner life, and yet, by dint 
of continuous training, to evolve habit and educe faith. All 
these spiritualising forces being arrayed upon the field of 
history, what mode of Christian statecraft was possible be- 

c 



34 Charlemagne. 

sides ? One only, and that the highest of all, that, namely, 
in which Christianity should receive into itself, and cultivate, 
by its holy agencies, all developable forms of nationality, 
encourage and foster every possible species of citizenship, 
and graft itself into every kind of polity, until, at last, each 
should be thoroughly, yet self-cognisantly, embued with the 
spirit, the life, and the purity which it imparts, " leavened " 
by " the same mind that was also in Jesus." This, the great 
work of the civilisation of modern Europe, Charlemagne 
inaugurated, and in part accomplished ; and this forms his 
grandest and holiest title to a place amongst " Epoch 
Men." 

The peculiar condition of Europe in itself, as well as in 
its relationships with the Eastern Empire and Islamism, 
must never be forgotten in forming an estimate of the reign 
and character of Charlemagne. In itself it was divided 
between the civilisation of the ancient empire and the bar- 
barism of the northern tribes ; and, more disastrously still, 
a struggle for supremacy was either active or imminent be- 
tween the State and the Church. In its relationship to the 
East, it required to maintain rivalry, cope in diplomacy, and 
out-manoeuvre in arms the great empire of which Constan- 
tinople was the capital; while, in regard to Islamism, it 
found itself in the twofold antagonism of interest and faith. 
To oppose the well-knit organisation of Mohammedanism, 
without succumbing to the anti-national organisation of the 
Papacy; to maintain the faith of Christendom, without 
espousing too thoroughly the cause of its asserted head ; to 
hold together the various states of Europe, in opposition to 
the blind obedience of the Eastern world, without tyranny, 
amid continuous intrigue and evasion, — this was Charle- 
magne's work and mission. Not only did " the dignity of his 



His Worth and Greatness. 35 

person, the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, 
the vigour of his government, and the reverence of distant 
nations," but also the important purposes he, in God's pro- 
vidence subserved, "distinguish him from the royal crowd ;" 
and it is chiefly because of these latter that " Europe dates 
a new era from his restoration of the Western Empire." * 

The saying of the illustrious historian, from whom we 
have extracted some portion of the closing terms of the pre- 
ceding paragraph, is undoubtedly true, viz., " The appella- 
tion of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes de- 
served, but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favour 
the title has been indissolubly blended with the name ;" but 
we must form a less depreciatory estimate of the life and 
doings of the Frankish monarch than Gibbon has done, 
before we can justify the enthusiasm of contemporaries, or 
the traditions of ages. We do not think it necessary to pare 
down the grandeur of ancient fact to the prosaic mediocrities 
of present actualities ; nor do we regard it as advisable to 
garment in the indefiniteness of myth all heroism and great- 
ness. We can accept the concurrent testimony of many 
witnesses without depreciation, and yet reject the fabulous 
stories of enthusiastic minstrels, without permitting our ad- 
miration of their object to decrease, or adopting the disen- 
chanting solvents of inapplicable criticism to dissipate the 
renown which ages have hallowed and time has embalmed. 
We must believe that it has been by more than "a rare 
felicity" that his name was the object of contemporary 
esteem and admiration, and even yet " is crowned with the 
praises of the historians and philosophers of an enlight- 
ened age." 

Greatness is a quality at no time so superfluously plentiful 
* See " Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. xlix. 



36 Charlemagne. 

in the world as to be easily mistaken ; its characteristics are 
too well marked and too conspicuously evident to be erro- 
neously attributed, with such singular unanimity and en- 
thusiasm, to any one who had not, in an undeniable manner, 
"gained his spurs" in the very face of difficulty. We do 
not now mean that greatness which is measured merely by 
the object accomplished, without regard to the manner of its 
accomplishment. We believe there is no true greatness — 
no greatness worthy of being perennially remembered — ex- 
cept that which embodies noble thoughts working towards 
a worthy end, recognising at once the dignity of humanity 
and the worshipfulness of God, and endeavouring to co-en- 
twine, in the execution of some purpose, both of these ele- 
ments of contemplation, both of these incentives to action. 
" Greatness," says the learned and ingenious Arthur Helps, 
" is not in the circumstances, but in the man ;" and it pos- 
sesses these as its prime and all-important qualities. He says 
— " openness of nature to admit the light of love and reason, 
and courage to pursue it." 

Let us proceed now to review the life-doings of Charle- 
magne, with continual reference to the foregoing ideas, and 
let us observe wherein he seems to be possessed of the " per- 
fect stature" of true greatness, and appears deserving or 
undeserving of the adnomen which the ages have bestowed 
upon him. 

As a ruler, Charlemagne first introduced into a wide cir- 
cuit of loose and disorganised tribes a full sense of the utility, 
the value, the importance, and the need of the monarchical 
principle, and gave strength and potency to that principle 
to those who acknowledged its necessity for others, but felt 
its burden inconvenient to themselves. On "the decline 
and fall of the Roman Empire " the idea of the state was 



Wisdom as a Rider. 37 

greatly altered — antiquity, permanency, and indefensible 
power were no longer numbered among its attributes. It 
had become a matter of convenience and convention, and 
did not seem an eternal and inevitable condition of nation- 
ality. Self-hood, developing into feudalism, was uniting 
families, bands, or tribes, under one lord, but separating 
them from each other and from the State. Municipality, 
opposing the fiscal restrictions of government, and the en- 
croachments of feudal chiefs, knit men together by the ties 
of commercial interest, rather than bound them in unques- 
tioning obedience to law. The Church, claiming dominion 
over the faith of the soul, yet making that claim the pretext 
for a universal empire and all-controlling power in matters 
terrdfctrial, held believers in bonds more tyrannous than those 
which statesmanship the most crafty had yet been able to 
introduce. It was no light weight with which to burden 
one's soul, the attempt to colligate and condition these 
several discordant and discord-causing elements, and so to 
co-ordinate each and all, that the enginry of government 
might use them all, and be itself subservient to none, though 
in harmony with the best and truest interests of each. This 
Charlemagne tried ; this he proved, in some measure, to be 
possible, and so far may be said to have succeeded. 

It was one of the praiseworthy peculiarities of the policy 
of Charlemagne, that though desirous of maintaining the 
dignity of the State as the highest tribunal of earthly law, he 
did not attempt to cramp, coop up, and circumscribe the 
whole of the subjects of his realm to one uniform, unbend- 
ing, legislative code, one rigid set of customs, and one mode 
of speech. He honoured and appreciated the distinctions 
which nations felt among themselves, marking them off from, 
and, in their own opinion, setting them above, others. All 



38 Charlemagne. 

those laws, therefore, which were based on ancient and im- 
memorial usage and special modes of life, and were thus 
intertwined with the affections and inner thoughts of men, 
he permitted to be regarded as sacred and unalterable, till, 
in the process of civilisation, and after the acquirement of 
new habits, the people were ripe for a change and anxious 
to receive it. Those manners to which, by the continued 
repetition of ages, the inhabitants of particular places had 
become accustomed, he allowed, though he did not en- 
courage; and those languages in which the thoughts and 
emotions of the soul had been wont to find utterance, he 
did not feel at liberty, even if it had appeared politic, to 
prohibit. He did not choose to weld into one vast des- 
potism the disjunct and inharmonious masses who subnfitted 
to his imperial sceptre ; nor did he compel and constrain 
his subjects to adopt a unity which they could not but 
hate and despise ; but he endeavoured to make them feel, 
that in the unity of the kingly power each state had its 
safest protection from the antagonism or encroachment of 
the other, and all had the surest hope of succour in the 
hour of need. 

It was well for humanity that this noble policy was ob- 
served, for from this fact arises the general prevalence of 
true domesticity. The Saxon nations were ever conspi- 
cuous for their venturous daring in war; but far more cha- 
racteristic of that great section of Europe's ancestral tribes 
were the exercise and play of the sanctifying influences of 
home. Not in the nomad life of the East, among the city- 
pent Greeks, or the stately and impassible Romans, were 
the tenderness and love which tones and tempers modern 
society originated or developed, but amid the native woods 
in which the German tribes wandered, yet dwelt. From 



Genius as a Warrior. 39 

them, too, the love of justice, freedom, and individuality 
has been mainly derived, — feelings which might have been, 
in a great measure, eliminated from modern society, had 
Charlemagne enforced, wherever victory crowned him, the 
adoption of a uniform, rigid, and unbending code of laws, 
which permitted no deviation, and repressed all individual 
and social development or progress. He did not seek a 
unity destructive of the very prime of manhood's character- 
istics — self-manifestation, — but a unity of aim, progress, 
personal, social, and national influence — a unity which re- 
cognised the sovereign as the embodied will of the people, 
and, at the same time, reverenced the will in each indivi- 
dual unit of the mass, whensoever consistent with the gen- 
eral-welfare, and in agreement with the higher purposes of 
national existence. As a ruler, then, Charlemagne deserves 
the name he bears, because, while he knit the most varied 
races and tribes together under his sovereignty, he secured 
to all the freedom of varied and spontaneous development, 
without limit of direction, extent, or means, except in so far 
as imperial necessities demanded their abnegation or with- 
drawal. 

As a warrior, Charlemagne exhibited at once the highest 
military genius and the most scrupulous conscientiousness, 
so far as regards the manner of accomplishing his ends. 
Whether his purposes were in all cases thoroughly defen- 
sible, we will not undertake dogmatically to assert ; but we 
may express our conviction, that in all his schemes and 
aims he was penetrated with an earnest desire to elevate 
humanity, and to extend civilisation and Christian enlighten- 
ment over the earth. It is quite true that now-a-days we 
believe that the gentle force of persuasion, and the graceful 
courtesy of expositive conversion, are the only heaven-per- 



40 Charlemagne. 

mitted means of gospel extension. It was otherwise in his 
age and in his nation. The terror of arms had succeeded 
in converting the Franks themselves, and they felt equally 
justified in using the tumult of battle and the excitement of 
war as the forerunners of " baptismal regeneration." The 
Saracens, too, had used the same agencies with success. It 
is Charlemagne's great glory, that though he conquered 
tribes as a soldier, he governed them as a Christian king; 
and that though he compelled submission by force, he en- 
deavoured to retain it by instruction. And that he was not 
altogether in error, the results, under Divine Providence, 
show; for this self-same Saxon race, who did anything 
rather than " receive the truth with gladness," became the 
most zealous for the honour of Christ, the most devoted 
adherents of the Church, and the most faithful, in the after 
ages, in maintaining purity of worship and freedom of 
thought. 

When Charlemagne's doings are looked upon in the light 
of his purposes, we see no reason for surprise "that he so 
often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the 
south." Let us say, rather, that if there is honour due to 
the resistance of temptation, he is entitled to it. " The 
weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy victory;" 
and then the wealth, influence, and renown of a wider em- 
pire than had ever been subjected to one sceptre might 
have been his : but he turned from the enticing thought, to 
devote himself, in numerous conflicts, amid many difficulties, 
to the subjugation and civilisation of the Saxon tribes, not 
only because he was intent on the diffusion of " the light 
that lighteneth the Gentiles," but perhaps also to secure the 
safety, integrity, and stability of his empire, by the conquest 
of the enemies of civil life. The intense, continuous, and 



His Intelligence and Energy. 4 1 

multiform activity of his mind and body during the thirty- 
three campaigns which he headed in Germany — the march- 
ing, counter-marching, and fatigue which he endured — the 
boldness, vigour, and rapidity of his thoughts, his resolu- 
tions, and his actions — the instantaneous decisiveness which 
his presence gave to a contest — the resistless onsweep and 
the breathless energy of all his expeditions — the impetuosity 
of action preceded and accompanied by coolness and so- 
briety of thought which he displayed, mark him out as one 
of nature's warriors. He had the heroism of creative 
thought, and he exhibited valour in the execution of his 
designs. It may be true that his thundering legions never 
encountered " an equal antagonist ; " but we must recollect 
that the Saxons had defied, and succeeded in defying, the 
mighty armies of Rome, and that Charlemagne overcame 
where both the sword and the sceptre of the Caesars were 
impotent. 

As a legist, he was far in advance of his age. The irrup- 
tion of the barbarians had upset the gigantic imperialism of 
Rome ; its magnificent codes — Theodosian and Justinian — 
had become powerless ; its greatness was thoroughly abased. 
The hesitancy shown to obey the commands of the wearers 
of the imperial purple manifested itself, in its ultimate re- 
sults, in the almost universal diffusion of a spirit of antago- 
nism to law. The individual had become almost all, the 
state almost nothing. From this condition of affairs there 
was a natural recoil and revulsion, which became incorpo- 
rate in feudalism, clanship, chieftaincy, &c, in divers forms, 
giving consolidation to the landed interest or military leader- 
ship ; while, in opposition to that again, arose municipali- 
ties as securities for commerce, trade, and manufactures, 01 
rather, for industrial pursuits. Monastic institutions may 



42 Charlemagne. 

have had some such politically conservative principle in> 
parted to them too, in the progress of time ; but the Papacy 
certainly clutched at imperial dominion, more because there 
was no great imposing force capable of being brought against 
it, than because of any right — scriptural, hereditary, or 
traditionary — which it was able to show. The empire of 
Charlemagne arose amongst such contending influences as 
these, and it is some renown to have been the earliest to 
attempt the "correction of abuses," and "the reformation 
of manners," in a time of this sort. The merit of this be- 
comes greater, when we reflect on the cautiousness with 
which it was tried, and the success with which it was at- 
tended. His Capitularies, though sometimes over-minute 
and finical, are enlightened, liberal, and extensive, calcu- 
lated, however, rather to soften the hardships and suspend 
the evils of his own age, than to form enduring enactments, 
from which the legists of all countries and times might draw 
the great and overruling principles of equitable legislation 
and generous government. He called together, so fre- 
quently as to give the assurance of formal right to their 
legislative advice, assemblies of nobles and bishops, — the 
only estates of the realm then capable of affording counsel 
in difficulty or help in emergencies, — and may thus be said 
to have initiated the system which afterwards resulted in 
representative, popular, legislative councils, in which the 
permanent estates were recognised as possessed of certain 
privileges in regard to legal enactments, financial arrange- 
ments, and the conduct of w r ars. 

Of Charlemagne as a scholar we have not hitherto had 
occasion to speak; and yet, even in this character, he 
appears in a most favourable light. By him, most certainly, 
knowledge was pursued under difficulties which few have 



His Literary Talents, 43 

encountered. There is something truly noble in the assi- 
duity and regularity with which, among all the irregularities 
of time and place which, during his campaigns, tended to 
disturb and unsettle both mind and habits, he studied, and 
read, and conversed with the learned. Late in life, he 
undertook to acquire the art of the scribe \ he toiled most 
energetically, even in the years of mature manhood, at 
tables of declensions and paradigms of conjugations, that he 
might become skilled in the usage of the classic tongues of 
antiquity. Over the dull mnemonics and formulae of logic, 
and upon the synoptic tables of rhetorical treatises, he spent 
much thought, listening with care and delight to expositions 
of their hidden meanings, and garnering the sayings of his 
teachers in his memory. Books were rare, so he collected 
around him an association of learned and thoughtful men, 
and from their conversation, as the best and most readily 
accessible mode of attaining knowledge, he acquired the 
rudiments of all the sciences of his time. It may be that 
his "studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect f but how 
few are there who, with the riches, influence, and pleasures 
of the Western Empire at their feet, would have turned from 
all the modes of joy they proffered, to seek a higher gratifi- 
cation than they could bestow in the teachings of astronomy 
grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, &c. ! Nor was it his own 
improvement alone he looked after : he had books read to 
his courtiers during the seasons of dining, and in hours of 
leisure, when haply they were to be found. He attended 
carefully to the education of his children, insisted on the 
attainment of their tasks, and taught them not only to love 
learning, but to honour the learned. He himself took great 
delight in literary intercourse, and among his learned cour- 
tiers he received the flattering nom de plume of David, in 



44 Charlemagne. 

allusion to the literary, victorious, and holy king of Israel. 
On them also playful surnames were bestowed; e.g., Al- 
cuin, his friend, adviser, and preceptor, was called Flaccus 
Albinus ; Riculf, Archbishop of Mayence, Damoetas ; Arno, 
Aquila ; and Angilbert, Homerus. This fact gives us a 
pleasing peep into the kindly character of the intercourse 
between the Frankish monarch and his literary friends, and 
shows him in a most amiable light. Neither do his merits 
under this head end here : he established scholastic institu- 
tions throughout his dominions, patronised the arts, and in 
various other ways laboured for the furtherance of the intel- 
lectual welfare of his people, the progress of national instruc- 
tion, and the promotion of true civilisation. 

As a churchman, Charlemagne was at once sincere and 
independent. He wished to be, as well as to be regarded, 
not only the guardian of justice and peace, the protector of 
civilisation, and the dispenser of culture, but also the regent 
of religion, the temporal head of the Church, and the patron 
of the Papacy. He aimed at seeing " the seed of the word" 
sown in fresh fields, the safe development of true piety 
among the nations, and the hosts of the Church united under 
one sovereign sceptre, yet having its own august spiritual 
administrator, guide, and head. He clearly foresaw the 
grasping at dominion which then lay latent in the assump- 
tions of the Popedom, and by a wise and vigorous stroke of 
policy, on the occasion of the coronation of his son, took 
care to mark, clearly and decidedly, the distinction between 
the hereditary, temporal right to the crown and privileges of 
the empire, and the acknowledgment and consecration of 
that right by the occupant of St Peter's chair. Farther even 
than this did his cautious policy extend ; for he maintained 
that the act of acknowledgment at least was reciprocal, and 



His Church Policy. 45 

that the Emperor had a just right to be made acquainted 
with the ground of the claims of any Pope for accession to 
the powers and honours of the Vatican. On this account it 
was determined that the election of the Pope should be 
examined and confirmed by the crowned head of the empire. 
Thus far we see that he drew a clear line of division between 
the temporal powers of a monarch and the spiritual potency 
of a pope, confessed himself a sincere servant of the Church, 
yet maintained a thorough independence. He did not arro- 
gate inconsistent privileges to himself, nor did he suffer 
inconsistent encroachments to be made upon himself, his 
subjects, his laws, or his dominions. 

The honest performance of duty is the noblest heroism, 
the truest manliness. In " the mighty strife of time," we 
have each — kings, thinkers, artisans, merchants, &c. — to 
bear our part. If it be well and bravely done, whatsoever 
be the form thereof, it is sacred and noble. Charlemagne 
must be tried by a loftier standard as a man than as aught 
else, for man is, in reality, a holier title than king,, which 
is only a manifestation, in one form, of human energy and 
thought, and is partial, not complete. Judged as a man, he 
seems to become amenable to other laws, and to assume a 
deeper responsibility. To keep one's own soul free from 
taint of sin is less easy than to sit in the centre of the springs 
of policy, and work them to the wonder of the world. 
Charlemagne was passionate, sensual, proud, and we might 
almost add, dishonest. Most probably his irascibility pro- 
ceeded from his pride, and gave itself freest vent when 
anything opposed his wishes or resisted his control, guidance, 
or government, as in the case of that reprehensible massacre 
of the Saxons on the banks of the Aller, mentioned in 
Chapter III. He was certainly somewhat addicted to 



46 Charlemagne. 

gluttony ; and though not, in the large sense of the word, 
intemperate, he drank of the juice of the grape in con- 
siderable quantities ; he relished the fasts of the Church 
little, and was more sedulous of having seemed to conform 
to its requirements on these points, than to give an honest, 
hearty, and concurrent obedience to its mandates. In his 
general policy, though it was undoubtedly governed by a 
great and illustrious idea, there was a considerable degree 
of self-seeking and hankering after renown, personal and 
national. In his domestic relations, he was not so pure, 
refined, and regular as might have been desirable; though 
we must recollect that it is but a short time since the 
opinion, that one of the grandest of the royal prerogatives 
was to dispense with the exercise of the virtues, has been 
abandoned in countries boasting of a high civilisation. We 
may attribute, therefore, some, at least, of Charlemagne's 
moral delinquencies to the accident of his position, and 
regard them more in the light of the venialities of a king than 
the transgressions of a man. Not that we mean to assert 
that greater licence should be permitted to the fountain of all 
law, but that we desire to state and to remember that such 
licence has been most usually granted, and very commonly 
taken advantage of. In a full estimate of all the difficulties 
with which his pathway through life was beset, we may con- 
clude that he used his best endeavours to live a life of manly 
and honourable industry and usefulness ; that as a man, he 
strove to regulate his temper, control his thoughts, and 
govern his conduct, according to the highest conceptions of 
the morality of his age in his circumstances ; that he, like 
most men, often failed in the interval of resolve and execu- 
tion, and had frequent need of patient perseverance, peni- 
tence, and prayer, to support, comfort, or re-inspire him. 



His Personal Character. 47 

It is impossible to bring together into the compass of a 
sentence or two the merits of Charlemagne in all the 
various points of view in which we should look at his 
doings and their results. The man who checked with vigour 
and success the turbulence of an unsettled state, compelled 
the recognition of national law, inspired a wide circuit of 
Europe with a common interest and common objects, and 
led men to pursue these interests and maintain these objects 
with collective counsel as well as w T ith united resources 
and efforts — the man who, while using Christianity as the 
instrument for widening his dominions and strengthening 
his throne, made it subservient to the quickening of national 
life, the diffusion of peaceful habits, and the encouragement 
of civilisation — the man who used the Papacy as a political 
agent, without lessening its dignity or influence as a reli- 
gious institution, and restrained its inordinate ambition 
while he aided its development in all useful modes — the 
man who controlled the clergy, the nobility, the soldiery, 
the merchantry, and the mass, while he was popular with 
all — the man who compelled acknowledgment from the 
potentates, not only of the Greek, but of the Persian 
empires, founded the original of all royal societies and 
academies, and who was the first to combine in one a mili- 
tary monarchy, a feudal nobility, a somewhat free com- 
merce, and a kind of constitutional assembly of states — has 
many claims to be regarded, not only as the father of the 
modern policy of Europe, but also to the regard and vene- 
ration of the ages which have benefited from his doings and 
by his life. 

It is true, indeed, that his personal reign was only a 
transitory good, and that in the progress of after events his 
masterful policy was abandoned, encroached upon, or suf- 



48 Charlemagne. 

fered to fall into inaction. But great men live more truly 
in their thoughts than even in their deeds ; for the latter 
can never be reproduced, the former can. It was not his 
vast empire, with all its pomp, circumstance, and state, that 
survived to tell succeeding times of the real grandeur of 
Charlemagne ; it was his wide schemes of policy, his decided 
imperial authoritativeness, combined with his popular mode 
of effecting his designs, and that nameless something which 
one involuntarily feels when in the presence, actual or ideal, 
of a strong, true, genuine man. These survived, and do 
survive him still. Insensibly, it may be, but surely, his 
spirit pervades the thoughts and politics of all modern 
nations, teaching them, in the hereafter of time, how best 

"To pursue 
The gradual paths of an aspiring change." 




Gregory VII — The Papacy. 

A.D. I020 — 1085. 



" Slow-paced but sure, Soana's village-lad 
Clomb to the loftiest height of human power. 
He knew to halt ; but never learn'd to cower — 

So firm the faith in his own fate he had. 
His was a blanchless cheek, a wily heart, 

A soul unhesitant in thought or act. 

He mapp'd his life out like an explored tract 
Before the passage of its earlier part 

To place Religion on an awful throne, 
Whence kings and nations should receive with awe, 
Guidance, rebuke, and life's resistless law — 

An earthly semblance of a heavenly one. 
Such was the purpose which inspired the hand 
And stirr'd the plotful brain of Hildebrand." 

— Eu. N. Lisle, M.A. 



"There was a carpenter of Tuscany, 
Whose son, from a cowl'd monk, made himself Pontiff. " 

R. II. Home's "Gregory VII." 



"Gregory VII. became the founder of papal pretensions, and of 
spiritual despotism." — L. R. de Vericour. 



"In the course of the eleventh century the Church became theo- 
cratical and monastical. The creator of this new form assumed by 
the Church, so far as it belongs to a man to create, was Gregory VII.' ' 
— Guizot. 



" Under Gregory VII. the ideas, hitherto for the most part unde- 
a eloped, of the supremacy of the Pope over the Church, and of the 
Church over the State, first assumed the form of a perfectly organised 
system."— y. C. L. Gieseler. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 




|j|HE growth of the Church into a great and durable 
power, spiritual in its aims and functions, as much 
as may be, detached from earth, #/tached to heaven, 
is one of the most singular of that series of phenomena 
which constitutes history. Its story is an exhaustless and 
perennial source of instruction and interest. Having its 
origin in heaven, it seeks to rise, and raise again to that 
resplendent height. And amidst manifold vicissitudes it 
has, during the eventful ages of the past, held its course 
right onwards and upwards with unslacking perseverance 
and undelaying energy. It is, as it was designed to be, the 
moral educator of the race. It was instituted at the giving 
of the first promise; it overlived the Deluge ; it was enshrined 
in the Abrahamic covenant ; it was manifested in the Sinaitic 
law; the Jewish people became its conservators; and type and 
prophecy were given as its handbook and guide. In the evo- 
lutions of history " the fulness of time" arrived. The known 
nations of the earth were brought under one empire, that it 
might have " free course." The Incarnation and the Death 
occurred ; but Resurrection followed, and the commission 
of the Church was granted. From the hills of Judea it 
passed, with prompt diffusiveness* into the chief seats of the 



52 Gregory VII 

world's idolatries, and subdued them. The tenfold wrath 
of persecuting Rome was braved and borne. Its adversity- 
was great ; and it was great in its adversity. It lurked in 
the catacombs of Rome, an outcast ; it emerged a victor, 
and avowed itself in the temples of Constantinople. The 
Empire that failed to awe it, fell before the barbarous hordes 
of the northern nations ; but the Church made the foes of 
Rome its subjects. Amid the wars and changes of ages it 
kept its place, and so secured predominance. It held the 
balance of power in Europe in its hands ; and it ultimately 
seized the helm of the world's progress, that it might steer 
it whithersoever it determined. Then it issued a claim to 
an undisputed supremacy over all thoughts, feelings, rights, 
customs, properties, powers, dominions, material civilisation, 
and intellectual efforts. With the intense sincerity and ab- 
sorption of a passion, its hierarchy sought power, privilege, 
and permanency ; and endeavoured to obtain recognition as 
an absolute and independent moral sovereignty, entitled to 
influence and guide persons, peoples, and princes \ to wield 
an unopposed dictatorship over minds, lives, actions, and 
events. It aspired to be regarded as the one single source 
and fountain of the civilising principle, and to hold in its 
grasp the spiritual guarantees of moral progress. It pro- 
fessed to garner up in its comprehensive purposes all the 
elements which co-operate in the determination of the great 
and permanent interests of humanity, and the final destinies 
of individuals and nations. Social influences, secular insti- 
tutions, moral schemes, political life, personal being, the 
very inner soul of man, conscience itself, were to be subject 
to its sway, and touched to their issues by its direction. 
These inordinate powers it claimed for behoof of humanity, 
as well as arrogated for the successful all-prevailingness of 



Papal Supremacy. 53 

its own schemes. The world was in those days tossed about 
and torn with change. The savage syllogisms of war alone 
decided the fate of peoples, and the reign of blood seemed to 
be acquiring permanency, and to have become chronic. To 
bring man out of this bondage to material force, and to 
make him susceptible of the influences of the spiritual world, 
was an aim in itself noble and holy ; and if the end could 
ever sanctify the means, a grander cause was never brought 
within the scope of historic development. 

In the course of the evolution of these far-reaching plans, 
many mighty men co-operated towards their ultimate suc- 
cess. There was one man, however, in whose person the 
unbounded ascendancy of the Church may be said to have 
culminated. A man sprung from the workshop, and emerg- 
ing from the cloister, persistently pursued purposes matured 
in the monastic cell and under the prior's cowl, until at 
length he was able to assume the mastery of the Roman 
Catholic Church, to direct all its affairs, and control all its 
decisions ; to push on its ambitious purposes until kings 
and emperors became the subjects, almost the serfs, of the 
occupant of St Peter's chair ; a man who made hierarchy 
and pontiffs alike the tools and instruments of his policy, 
and who, by inflexible determination, subtle suggestion and 
conception, unshaken courage, extensive learning, persuasive 
eloquence, and a long life's devotion, managed the Papacy 
under many different Popes, until at length — his self-restraint 
rewarded by success — he was able to take his seat upon a 
throne to which empires seemed the footstools, and of which 
kings gladly accepted the ministry, — a spiritual Caesar, 
sitting in Rome, yet swaying the world with a potency no 
Caesar ever wielded ; for he claimed supremacy, not over 
act only, but also over thought. 



54 Gregory VII. 

Hildebrand, (afterwards Pope Gregory VII.,) was born 
about a.d. 1020, in Soana, a city of Etruscan origin, situated 
in that low, marshy tract of land, called La Maremma, which 
margins the Tuscan coast of the Mediterranean Sea. His 
father — Bonicius, a carpenter — was a native of the Republic 
city of Orvieto, to which Soana was subject. Hildebrand, 
though of low birth, was of noble extraction. He was de- 
scended from the family of the Aldobrandeschi, and dis- 
played, in his after life, many of the characteristics of his 
kindred.* Both his father and himself were patronised by 
the Counts of Tusculum, a family which exercised great 
power over, if not in, the Church. This patronage, rather 
than his own desire, seems to have determined his destiny ; 
for in one of his letters to the Romans, he says, " Ye know 
that, contrary to my inclinations, I was brought up to holy 
orders." In his early years, he gave signs of great ability 
and love of learning ; he was diligent, patient, capable, and 
intelligent In the monastery of Calvello, near Soana, he 
received his boy-training, and was thereafter removed to the 
monastery of St Mark, on the Aventine Mount, of which, 
at that time, his uncle was abbot. Here he underwent 
ecclesiastical discipline, and was initiated into the order of 
the Benedictines \ here, too, he pored over the laws and the 
traditions of the ancient ages of the Church. Being diligent 
and studious, his mind ripened rapidly. He was noted, by 
his instructors and among his fellows, as a youth of quick 
and penetrating intellect, of determined character, of religious 
disposition, and of noble demeanour. He excited at once 
love and respect. Rom afforded ample opportunities for 
becoming acquainted with the doctrines, traditions, and cus- 
toms of the Church, but supplied no facilities for the acqui- 
* Dante's " Purgatorio," xi. 58-65. 



His Early Years. 55 

sition of secular knowledge ; and of this Hildebrand's soul 
was greedy. With his uncle's leave, at the age of sixteen, 
he became an inmate of the famous monastery of Clugni, in 
Burgundy, where he proceeded, with unwearying industry, 
to study canon law, moral philosophy, rhetoric, the Scrip- 
tures, and the political machinery of the Church. The holy 
leisure of seven years was thus spent, and at the expiry of 
that period he had acquired that wide range of information, 
that eloquent and vigorous style, that wise wiliness, that 
powerful self-command, that determinate resoluteness, and 
that skill in managing men, which he afterwards displayed. 
Even then, too, he seems to have been imbued with that 
zeal for reform, that arrogant energy, that calculating pru- 
dence, that craft, sagacity, and foresight, and that bold, per- 
sistent, and wide-reaching ambition, which made him, in 
the after-time, the leading man of his age. These were 
years of intense and earnest self-formation. 

St Odilo, the originator of the " Truce of God," an influ- 
ential, praiseworthy man, was then abbot of Clugni, and 
Casimir I., king of Poland, was Hildebrand's companion. 
Casimir was recalled to his throne in 1041 ; and in the 
same year Hildebrand was commissioned by St Odilo to 
reform his old convent, St Mark's, on the Aventine. He 
forced the monks to discontinue their practice of allowing 
shepherds to pen their flocks in the churches to save them 
from midnight thieves ; and dismissed the women who, in 
nominal servitude but real uncleanness, waited upon and 
ministered to the monks, to the scandal of their profession. 
He became a man of mark for austerity, gravity, and learn- 
ing. He did not cease to increase these in his new posi- 
tion. Under Lorenzo, bishop of Amain* — with Pope Bene- 
dict IX., and Gratian, archbishop of St John, (afterwards 



56 Gregory VII. 

Pope Gregory VI.,) as fellow-pupils — Hildebrand studied 
science, — which the superstitious then looked on as magic. 
Benedict IX., whose own name was Theofilatus, was the 
son of Albericus, Count of Tusculum, and had been nomi- 
nated and consecrated Pope in 1033, before he was ten 
years old : he was exceedingly licentious. The Romans 
revolted, and drove him from his throne in 1044; and a 
new Pope (Silvester III.) was elected ; but his election was 
speedily set aside. Benedict re-entered Rome by the aid 
of the swords of his father's retainers. By the negotiation 
of Hildebrand, however, it was arranged that Benedict 
should transfer the papal chair to his friend Gratian, for 
fifteen hundred pounds of gold. This being settled,. 
Gratian, as Gregory VI., donned the purple, and Hilde- 
brand was appointed to the office of his secretary. Gregory, 
on pretext of clearing the highways near Rome from free- 
booters, surrounded himself with an army, and thus awed 
the people into acquiescence in his simoniacal advancement ; 
while the arch-schemer, Hildebrand, who formed the plan, 
was made subdeacon of the Church, and bishop of his 
father's native city, Orvieto. 

Henry III., emperor of Germany, a man of firm will, 
good talents, extensive information, and some eloquence, 
was displeased at the turbulence of the idle and restless 
Romans, and determined to endeavour as their temporal 
superior, to purify and pacify the Church. He set out for 
Italy. Gregory, attended by his secretary, met him on the 
way. He received them politely \ and they retired, flatter- 
ing themselves upon the success of their policy. On 
arriving at Sutri, eleven miles from Rome, Henry called a 
council, at which he deposed, as all irregularly elected, 
either by intrigue, interest, or simony, the three existent 



Rapid A dvancement. 5 7 

popes, — Benedict IX., Silvester III., and Gregory VI. 
Benedict retired to his estate, and Silvester to his bishopric, 
but Gregory was banished to the convent of Chigni, whither 
Hildebrand accompanied him. On the death of St Odilo, 
Hildebrand was chosen prior of Clugni ; and here, after 
having left him heir of all his wealth, and, (by a sort of 
Hannibal's oath,) bound him to pursue his enemies with 
unslacking vengeance, Gregory VI. died in Hildebrand's 
arms. 

Henry, at the Council of Sutri, appointed a new Pope — 
— Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who assumed the title of 
Clement II. He was immediately enthroned, and on 
Christmas 1046, he with all due solemnity crowned the 
Emperor, Henry III. In 1047, Clement, at the instigation 
of the Emperor, issued a decree, that no future Pope should 
be acknowledged till he had obtained the imperial sanction. 
Clement accompanied Henry across the Alps, and on his 
return, died — it is said by poison — at Ravenna, after an 
occupancy of the papal chair of nine and a half months. 
The old Pope, Benedict, the suspected poisoner, then reas- 
sumed the pontifical seat. In July 1048, the Emperor 
raised Poppo, bishop of Brixen (Damasus II.) to the papacy; 
but he died in Palestrina — by poison, too, it is thought — 
twenty-three days after his elevation; and so Benedict re- 
mained in the chair. No sooner did the news of the de- 
mise of Damasus II. reach Clugni, than Hildebrand set off 
to Germany, with the design of taking part in, and perhaps 
of influencing, the choice of a new Pope. Henry was, 
however, too rapid. Bruno, bishop of Toul, a relative of 
the Emperor's, was, on his nomination, elected at the Diet of 
Worms. The news reached the hurrying Hildebrand, but 
he pressed on, and met the Pope on his way Romeward. 



58 Gregory VII. 

He invited Bruno to Clugni, and there unfolded to him a 
part of the grand scheme for elevating the papacy with 
which his own soul was filled. He inveighed with saga- 
cious eloquence and urgent earnestness against the subjec- 
tion of the sacred to the secular power, and maintained that 
the imperial election was an invasion of the rights and in- 
stitutions of the Church. The calculating craft of Hilde- 
brand wrought upon the mind of Leo IX. The former 
undertook to manage everything successfully, if the latter 
would consent to follow his advice. This was agreed to ; 
and Leo accordingly divesting himself of the externals of 
dignity, reassumed the poor habiliments of a monk, and re- 
fused to be called Pope until the voice of the cardinals and 
people of Rome should welcome him as such. Barefooted 
and humbly clad, meek and lowly in seeming, Leo, the 
shepherd of the Church, walked in modest pilgrimage to the 
loftiest eminence the world afforded. Hildebrand accom- 
panied him. But his political foresight and intriguing spirit 
had forerun his own presence, and, by his contrivance, an 
extraordinary ovation rewarded the obedient Leo for his few 
weeks' abstinence from glory and applause. Enthusiasm 
seemed to have run wild, and re-echoing acclamations ac- 
companied Leo from beyond the gates of Rome to the 
(then humble) church of St Peter's. Leo heaped benefac- 
tions upon Hildebrand. He was made Sub-deacon of St 
Paul's, Cardinal, Abbot, Canon of the Holy Roman Church, 
and Custodier of the altar of St Peter. Success favoured 
his daring. On the altar of the founder-apostle of the 
Roman Church were laid the annual offerings of every 
count, duke, abbot, prince, and king, to the holy apostle 
who — through his successors and deputies — held supremacy 
in the Church militant, and possessed " the power of the 




44 Barefooted, and humbly clad, Leo, the shepherd of the Church, walked in 
modest pilgi image to the loftiest eminence the world afforded. Hildebrand 
accompanied him.— Epoch Men, Page 58. 



His Crafty Designs. 59 

keys " in heaven and hell. Besides these, the payments of 
the people, for the maintenance of the state and the services 
of the Church, were deposited on the same altar, and Hilde- 
brand was the keeper of them all. He speedily became 
the head and soul, the animating spirit, of the movement 
party in the Church. Leo's simple, unsuspicious honesty 
made him a fit tool for working out unpopular purposes. 
Hildebrand was constantly engaged in prompting him to 
some new reform, and some stirring change. He kept 
Leo, however, as much from Rome as possible, that he 
might retain in his own hand, the real, though not the 
ostensible, management of that city and its intrigues. 
Hildebrand, therefore, kept up a continued succession of 
pilgrimages, processions, synods, and councils, and a con- 
stant moving to and fro between Rome, France, Germany, 
Hungary, &c, in most of which he accompanied and as- 
sisted the Pope, at the same time that he held the princes 
and ecclesiastics under his own curb, by rapid movements 
and bold measures. Simony, and the immorality of the 
clergy, were cursed and fulmined against, and those guilty 
of either were anathematised and excommunicated. At the 
Council of Rheims, in this Pope's reign, it was first decided 
that the Church of Rome should be recognised as chief, 
and paramount over all churches, and that the Pontiff, as 
primate, should rule and overrule all others. At a council 
in the church of St Lateran, in Rome, the doctrine of tran- 
substantiation was affirmed, in the act which condemned 
Berengar — who denied the corporeal presence of Christ in 
the symbols of the Eucharist — as a heretic. Hildebrand, 
though admiring the acute and subtle genius and the learn- 
ing and sanctity of Berengar, opposed him, but urged a 
compromise of tenets, which was agreed to. Leo also, by 



60 Gregory VII. 

Hildebrand' s advice, declared war against the Normans, and 
even led the fight himself. 

Hildebrand, now longing for the downfall of the Pope 
he had used as his puppet, began to intrigue with the de- 
posed Benedict \ and these two, conspiring together, bribed 
the Italian troops into defection, so that Leo IX. was taken 
prisoner by the Normans, and confined in Civitella and 
Beneventum. 

" Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, 
Quite vanquish'd him ; " — 

and when released by the pity of his captors, he returned 
to Rome overcome with sorrow, and died of a broken heart, 
April 19, 1054. 

Hildebrand had taken his measures cunningly. Bene- 
dict re-ascended the papal chair, and persecution and re- 
venge occupied all his thoughts. This created a storm of 
fury and insurrection. Hildebrand fomented the rage, be- 
cause it formed his best excuse to his former ally for taking 
part in the choice of a new occupant of the apostolic 
primacy. He managed to get the appointment of plenipo- 
tentiary of the Roman clergy and people, with unlimited 
authority in this matter. He insinuated himself into the 
confidence of the Emperor, and, by his singular address, 
secured the nomination of the very man of his heart's desire. 
This was Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstadt, the most influ- 
ential of Henry's counsellors — a man of wealth, prudence, 
and ambition. Gebhardt hesitated; Hildebrand insisted; 
and the tiara — glittering temptation — overcame him. He 
was consecrated — April 13, 1055 — as Victor II. Bene- 
dict was enraged, and resisted ; but the masterly intrigues 
of the Canon of the Roman Church secured a peaceful 



His Insatiable Ambition. 61 

accession — indeed, ex-Pope Benedict IX. died (V) in a con- 
vent about the same time. 

The choice of Hildebrand displayed great tact. He 
weakened the imperial council, and yet strengthened his 
own party : for Gebhardt, who had passed all his lifetime 
in Germany, and in the imperial court, as he was unac- 
quainted with Italian laws and customs, could not materially 
interfere with the working-out of the plans of the Cardinal 
who had helped him into power. His art was that of An- 
tony with Lepidus : — 

" And though we lay these honours on this man, 
To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads, 
He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold — 
To groan and sweat under the business — 
Either led or driven as we point the way ; 

To wind, to stop, to run directly on, 

His corporal motion govern'd by my spirit." 

Victor II. was acute enough to see that a strong ambi- 
tion guided the views of Hildebrand, and he contrived to 
rid himself of his personal control, by sending him as his 
legate to France, to outroot simony. Hildebrand went, 
full of outward obedience and inward wrath. But he was 
an earnest man, and gave himself to the work, though he 
did not leave means unarranged to maintain and further his 
interests at Rome during the politicly-planned exile to 
which the astute Pontiff had at once promoted and con- 
demned him. On this mission, his fame was magnified by 
popular ignorance, fanatical adulation, and cunning prelat- 
ism. Stern and uncompromising in his Legatine functions, 
he yet mingled such private suavity with his public arbitre- 
ments, that admiration and love waited on his progress. 
Short as he was in stature, his intrepidity and imperiousness 



62 Gregory VII. 

lent a dignity to his form ; and his keen, decisive intellect 
left nothing unmoved which lay between his intentions and 
the results he wished. Miraculous powers of spiritual dis- 
cernment were attributed to him. It was said he had " that 
curious skill which, comparing looks with words, could 
pluck out the lie though guarded round about with subtlest 
phrase — could see and tear a falsehood from the heart, 
though it lay hidden like the germ of blight within a 
flower." At a council held in Lyons, he accused the whole 
assembled bishops of being disciples of Simon Magus, not 
of Simon Peter. One bishop denied the charge. " Recite 
the Doxology ! " thundered Hildebrand. " Glory be to the 

Father, the Son, and the " A sudden alarm seized 

the prelate as he attempted to name the Holy Spirit, and 
confessing his guilt, he was deposed then, though afterwards 
re-installed. Other eighty bishops, believing — or pretending 
to believe — in his supernatural prescience, confessed, and 
were forgiven by the crafty legate. " Ceremony is a scare- 
crow to awe-strike fools." 

In this ambassadorial tour, Ferdinand of Castile and 
Henry III. of Germany agreed to abide by the decision of 
Hildebrand, as to which of them should bear the exclusive 
title of Emperor. The legate gave his voice in favour of 
Henry's claim, and so made the sovereign of Germany the 
bearer of a designation and supremacy, the right to which 
was founded on the judicial decree of a Churchman. 

Leaving Lyons, Hildebrand repaired to Clugni — now 
governed by Abbot Hugo — and began the reform of the 
monks there, by condemning to death many of the most 
licentious, indolent, and ignorant, asserting that he did so 
by the inspiring suggestion of Jesus Christ. At Tours he 
called Berengar before him, and by sheer threats compelled 



Success of his Intrigues. 63 

him to abjure his doctrines. After these displays of zeal, 
Victor recalled him to Rome. But here his influence was 
too manifest, and he was sent to Florence, and kept under 
surveillance — an unavailing measure; for he was too well 
versed in intrigue, and too firmly determined on working 
out his designs, to abstain either from secret efforts or open 
acts. The winning card seemed always in his hand. 

In 1056, the Emperor, Henry III., died, leaving Agnes, 
his wife, regent of the kingdom, and the Pope guardian of 
the person of his son, Henry IV. — a child six years of age. 
This was a fresh chance for effecting the papal supremacy, 
and the sleepless mind of Hildebrand foresaw that new 
moves on the chess-board of European politics were pos- 
sible. Victor, Henry's guardian, died in 1057. But the 
master-builder of the Pontificate was not yet prepared to 
place (and be) the key-stone of his finished work \ and 
though he coveted the Papacy, he employed his influence 
to put the tiara and the purple on another. He restrained 
his own ambition, only as huntsmen pull the red-eyed 
mastiff in, " to let it slip with deadlier certainty" at last. 
Policy, as usual, dictated the choice, and the manner of 
expressing it. Frederic of Lorraine was the brother of 
Godfrey, duke of Tuscany, whose power, as a barrier 
between the Papal states and the empire, would be advan- 
tageous. Though Hildebrand was nominated, to keep his 
name and position before the Church, Frederic was elected, 
apparently by a tumult, really by Hildebrand's consummate 
management. The new Pope was styled Stephen IX. 
New honours were showered upon his helpmate, and Hilde- 
brand was delegated to represent the Church at the imperial 
court of Germany. Pursuing the directions of the prime 
minister and dictator of the apostolic see, Stephen decreed 



64 Gregory VII. 

that ecclesiastics should not be cited before civil tribunals, 
and that they should not be taxed by the secular power. 
He also projected bestowing upon his brother Godfrey the 
imperial crown, and of employing him to expel the Normans 
from Naples and Sicily. But death, after an eight months' 
reign, stayed his unaccomplished intent at the very moment 
of its initiation, Before his death, he caused the assembled 
clergy and people of Rome to swear that they would delay 
the election of a successor till Hildebrand's return from the 
German court. The Romans naturally hated Germanic 
popes, and, taking advantage of Hildebrand's absence, not- 
withstanding their oath, they chose John Mincius, bishop of 
Villetri, nicknamed the Stupid; and, under the title of Bene- 
dict X., had him consecrated by the Archbishop of Ostia. Hil- 
debrand posted rapidly to Rome, bearing with him the letters 
patent of the Empress-Regent, Agnes, for the enthronisation 
of Gerard, bishop of Florence, a native of Burgundy, related 
to the duke of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, accom- 
panied by whose armies he marched to Rome. Benedict X. 
resigned through fear, and Gerard (Nicholas II.) was con- 
secrated on 6th January 1059, in the church of St Peter's, 
Rome. The Romans were riotous, and tumults broke out 
against the new Pontiff. He retired to Pisenum, and left 
the control of the revoltful factions to Hildebrand. In this 
emergency, his courage and cunning did not forsake him. 
Threats and bribes were freely employed to still or soothe 
the insurgents, and before Easter the Pope — now rivalless 
by the death, fraudful and violent, of Benedict X. — was 
supreme, in seeming, at Rome. 

In 1059, at a council, in the Lateran at Rome, consisting 
of 113 members of the hierarchy, it was resolved, at Hilde- 
brand's instigation, that no one should be placed in the 



Plot and Counterplot. 65 

Apostolic Chair except by the consent and choice of the 
College of Cardinals — reserving to the German Emperor 
the right of assent Thus the Roman clergy, the Emperor, 
and the people were at once denuded of their several rights 
in the election of the Primate of the Church. Hildebrand 
was now the acting governor of the whole machinery of the 
Papal Court, and the invariable companion and confidant of 
the father and shepherd of Christ's flock. By his energetic 
plots, Robert Guiscard, the leader of the Normans, was made 
the shield of the Church against the resistant counts and 
barons, whose rights the new resolves of the hierarchy had 
infringed ; and the services of this adventurer in putting down 
the refractory aristocracy of Italy, were rewarded by the title 
of duke, and by an investiture of the lands of Apulia, Cala 
bria, Sicily, &c. He, in return, swore allegiance to the Holy 
See. The grasp of the Papacy was gradually more and 
more tightened round the sceptre rather than the crook, and 
step by step did the ardent and ambitious Hildebrand 
advance the occupant of St Peter's chair from shepherd-like 
oversight to sovereign supremacy. 

This purpose was fatally pursued, even to extermination, 
against the partisans of Benedict X. The Norman troops 
were "let slip" upon the counts and barons in the Cam- 
pagna, and with insatiable and sanguinary eagerness they 
attacked and destroyed them. This temporal overthrow ot 
his enemies did not content the arrogant audacity which 
Hildebrand had evoked in the soul of Nicholas. He sent 
an embassage, armed with full powers of excommunication, 
against the simoniacal, wedlock-loving priests of Milan. 
Many contumacious bishops were deposed, and the offend- 
ing and penitent were threatened and warned. So much 
further was the great scheme evolved \ and a new machinery 

E 



66 Gregory VII 

was requisite to carry on the schemes of the progress party. 
On the 4th June 1061, Nicholas II. died at Florence, in 
circumstances not quite free from suspicion. 

Hildebrand knew that the sanctity of helplessness was 
thrown over the interest of Henry IV. during his minority, 
and that no final struggle could be managed until he was 
able himself to hold the reins of empire. The time was not 
yet white for his harvest, and hence he determined again to 
set another in the forehead of his party, while he should 
move and animate the government. He offered to compro- 
mise the difference between the Empire and the Church, 
by undertaking to secure the election of any ecclesiastic the 
Empress-Regent would fix upon, provided cardinals alone 
were, according to the new electoral law, allowed to give 
their votes. This, on behalf of her son, she refused to agree 
to; and at a congress of bishops at Basle, Cadolaus was 
chosen by the Imperialists to fill the papal seat. He took 
the title of Honorius II. Hildebrand — determined not to 
be foiled in the mighty achievement on which he had set 
his heart, and towards the accomplishment of which he had 
toiled with such eager intensity — called together an opposing 
council, and, as Cardinal-Archdeacon of Rome, proposed 
the elevation of Anselmo, bishop of Lucca, to the headship 
of the Apostolic See. This was agreed to with acclamation, 
and Alexander II. became the rival of Honorius. Hilde- 
brand intimated to the emperor that he was prepared to 
maintain the validity of the election made by the cardinalate 
with the sword, if requisite. Henry decided on appealing to 
arms against this usurpation, and preparations for war were 
made by both parties. Meanwhile, Hildebrand hastened 
the consecration and enthronisation of his nominee. But 
his fiery temper, roused to desperation at the occurrence of 



Assaulting the Pope. 67 

such a crisis, for once outran discretion, and made him for- 
get his usual tactics — a mingling of audacious daring, fore- 
thoughtful caution, and well-veiled cunning. 

It happened thus : — In 1061, in that old church which 
now forms c-ne of the vaults of the Vatican, and is, as fable 
reports, reared over the spot where the remains of the apostle 
Peter repose, the magnificent ceremonials usual on the 
consecration of a new pontifT had, despite the protest by 
Benzone, bishop of Alba, against the legitimacy of the 
inauguration, because it wanted the specially reserved sanc- 
tion of the emperor, just been completed. Alexander II., 
Vicar-General of the Church, and the earthly representative 
of its heavenly head, was preaching in the ordinary humble, 
" nolo efiiscopari" style, in presence of a conclave of cardinals, 
ambassadors, and people. In his sermon he lamented the 
divided state of the Church, and expressed so earnest a 
desire for the peace of Zion, that he even proffered to sus- 
pend the exercise of his holy functions till he had received 
the assent of the imperial power to his appointment. This, 
Hildebrand could not brook. It seemed to him yielding 
up to kingly sway a power of which the Church ought never 
now to quit its hold. He dashed up to the papal throne, 
and there struck the Pontiff on the cheek with his closed 
fist, and ejecting him from the church, locked him up in 
his chambers to fast and repent. Even to such a height of 
imperious domineering had this prelate raised himself — 
even thus did he then lord it over God's heritage ! The 
Pope, like a flogged cur, was thereafter submissive to his 
master. Hildebrand ruled and overruled everything. Risk- 
ing the arbitrement of war, he was, on the plains of Nero, 
14th of April 1062, defeated by Cadolaus, who entered 
Rome in triumph. But it was short Duke Godfrey of 



68 Gregory VII . 

Tuscany and Hildebrand besieged him there, and he was 
compelled to fly. Blood, pillage, and horror prevailed 
everywhere, and the enemies of Alexander II. were fain to 
lick the dust before the unquailing Chancellor of the Holy 
See, for to that office Hildebrand had been raised by the 
insulted Pope. By the aid of Bishop Annone, Hildebrand 
contrived to kidnap the youthful Emperor Henry. Agnes, 
his mother, resigned her functions, withdrew her sanction of 
Cadolaus, was absolved, and ended her days in the city of 
Rome, an humble devotee of the Holy See. 

At a council in Cologne, with the boy-emperor, a prisoner, 
at its head, Alexander II. was declared legally elected. This 
decision was re-pronounced at Rome in the Lent of 1062 
and Cadolaus was excommunicated. He was not subdued 
though. He determined to run the gauntlet with his foes, 
especially with that inexorable prince of plots who had 
tricked him out of the purple and fine linen of the Papacy, 
— Hildebrand. 

The Lombardese army of Cadolaus met the Tuscan 
soldiers of Godfrey in the Leonine portion of Rome, and 
was defeated. Cadolaus fought with the courage of despair, 
and having, with one Cencius, cut his way through the Hilde- 
brandists, reached the Castle of St Angelo, where he defi- 
antly sustained a siege of two years, and whence he at last 
escaped. He continued the war during his life, though he 
was again deposed at Mantua in 1064. At the same council, 
Alexander II. was solemnly proclaimed to be legally elected, 
and all his acts were confirmed. 

The victorious Pontiff, less mindful of the duties of his 
dignity than the power of enjoyment, and the pomp and 
grandeur it conferred, left the management of the tempoial 
and spiritual affairs of the Papacy to the secret begetter of 



The Philosophy of Intrigue. 69 

all those schemes which tended to the overshadowing of the 
whole world by one gigantic institution, which should per- 
vade and permeate all — should not only rule all princes, but 
enforce obedience from all people. Hildebrand unhaltingly 
pursued his course, strong in the invincibility of his cause, 
and in the inflexibility of his own character, and by the 
mighty chemistry of his own passionate persistency, regu- 
lated the results of the co-operating activities of rivals to the 
productions of his own ends — the union of the priesthood 
into one interest-linked phalanx ; the attainment of entire 
supremacy for the Popedom; the organisation of a grand 
central authority in Rome, whose behests should control 
the haughtiest monarchs and the most indomitable peoples; 
the institution of a permanent and invulnerable ecclesias- 
tical State ; the aggrandisement of the Church, so that it 
might be the unopposed tutor of humanity in Christian 
civilisation. 




C^ESARISM IN THE CHURCH. 




| HE hurry of events continued. Hildebrand pur- 
sued his purpose with the swerveless intensity of 
conviction. The age required an inflexible and 
energetic spirit, filled brimful with a thought new to the 
world and history ; and success had hitherto authenticated 
the mission of that premier of the Church. To erect, amid 
the ceaseless turmoil of war, a durable power, capable of 
authoritatively acting as the champion and guardian of 
civilisation, intelligence, and morality, against military licence 
and the tyranny of force — to rear, among, and yet above, 
the thrones of kings and emperors, a supreme Regality, 
wielding a superintending and controlling sway over all life 
and all the issues of life, over potentates and people, law- 
givers and laws, noble and serf, priest and proselyte — to 
establish an organisation whose influences were v/oven into 
the innermost tissues of society, and whose ruler was armed 
with the might of a godlike irresistibility — whose foremost 
man held kings as thralls, and emperors as vassals — whose 
chief was empowered to direct, advise, reprimand, denounce, 
and even depose monarch or minister — seemed to him a 
noble and a holy aim. With the devoted absorption of a 



The Celibacy of the Clergy, 71 

passion, he had given himself up to its accomplishment. 
The gleam upon the ultimate heights of effort was already 
becoming visible. The sword and sceptre were waning 
before the crosier. To halt now in his great life-task would 
have been traitorous alike to the past and to the future. 
Hesitance seemed to be a crime — the greatest crime he 
could commit. If he must tarnish the most fine gold of 
the papal tiara with intrigues, warfare, craft, and fraud, and 
mix its divine metal with a human alloy, the statesman's 
ready plea, necessity, formed an ample justification — 

" The cause exacts it, and I may not shrink — 
That cause which makes of all this mortal world 
But one vast engine for its purposes ; 
And still works on, and pauses not, nor spares, 
Though every strained and shrieking cable were 
Spun out of human fibre." 

To bind together the whole priesthood in one inviolable 
unity, strong in its indivisibility — to abstract all family and 
national feeling from the soul — to sacerdotalise the clergy — 
to keep them a class apart and separate — to knit them to- 
gether into one specific organisation — to converge all their 
feelings, desires, ambitions, interests, and efforts towards 
one object, the permanency of the order to which they be- 
longed — it was requisite that they should be individually 
brought into an exceptional position. In one way only 
could this be effectively attained — priests should be mar- 
riageless. A life of entire celibacy sunders at once the ties 
of kindred, those closely-entertwining fibres of the soul 
which join society into a mass. In becoming a priest, the 
novice required to unlink himself from the world, and to 
fasten himself into the ecclesiastical brotherhood; to re- 
linquish all sonship, except to the Church ; all fatherhood, 



J2 Gregory VII. 

except that of spiritual parentage ; all bondage of the heart's 
vows, save to his order. Every avenue of pleasure, hope, 
profit, ambition, or success was sealed to the priest but one 
— unquestioning submission to the Church. Hereditary 
place and power were thus made to them impossible, and 
the Church became an oligarchy continually resistive of the 
overweening domination of kings and nobles — an oligarchy 
in which, for the most part, talent secured eminence. Hence 
the ardent pertinacity with which Hildebrand insisted on 
priestly celibacy, and hence the vigour with which he di- 
rected his energy to the accomplishment of this hierarchi- 
cal necessity. 

Simony was scarcely less hurtful to the Church than 
marriage. The sale and purchase of preferment and power 
in the Church made its prelates little else than the tools of 
the sovereign who nominated the holder of office — the in- 
struments by which his purposes were to be worked. There 
was no anchor of safety for the Church in a priesthood 
whose place and power depended on Imperial sanction. 
The cables were sure to slip under any strain. It must be 
felt by every priest and prelate that he was the servant of 
the Church alone; that he was situated where and as he 
was for its sake ; and that in its danger his own fate was 
jeoparded. Celibacy and the Papal investiture of the 
members of the hierarchy were co-ordinate modes of effect- 
ing the sacerdotalism of the priesthood; of maintaining 
the clergy as a separate caste, having an interest in a vast 
spiritual organisation and institution, which claimed pre- 
eminence in power, and held the kingdoms of the world in 
subserviency to its designs. Claiming to be a divinely 
substantiated authority, the Church necessarily held that 
all earthly dignity derived its legitimacy from it, and was 



Force \ Fraud, and Insurrection. j$ 

dependent upon and amenable to it. The balance of power 
Hildebrand held to be the will of the Church. 

Purposes such as these, interfering with Imperial domina- 
tion, social life, civic institutions, state policy, national feel- 
ings, family interests, and personal liberty, met indeed with 
little acceptance in the stormy youth of civilisation, and 
required an unyielding austerity, a decisive energy, an in- 
tense zeal, and an overbearing persistency, to bring them 
into a workable condition. These qualities Hildebrand 
possessed ; and that he exercised them, the narrative of his 
acts amply shows. This we now resume : — 

Alexander II. deputed Hugo, cardinal of Silva-Candida, 
to go, as his legate, to Spain, to persuade Sancho, the new 
King of Arragon and Castile, to adopt the ritual of the 
Romish Church ; while he, accompanied by Hildebrand, 
went to his native city, Milan, to quell a disturbance between 
its citizens and their ecclesiastical superiors. Hildebrand 
had stirred up the whole excitement and revolt, that he 
might press the Pope to decisive action against simony and 
the marriage of priests, which he stigmatised as concubinage. 
Of simony the Milanese clergy proved their guiltlessness ; 
and they defended their right to marry. Archbishop Guido, 
though himself un wedded, maintained the justice and legality 
of priestly marriages. Ariold, a tool of Hildebrand's, op- 
posed him. Guido was excommunicated ; and Ariold, in 
revenge, was drowned by the populace in the Lago Maggiore. 
Hildebrand sent an armed force against Guido, who was 
compelled to succumb. Henry IV. invested one Godfrey 
with the vacant dignity. Hildebrand opposed the Imperial 
nominee, and, by excommunication, procured his retirement, 
whereupon Guido was re-instated. 

Hildebrand's watchful eye was everywhere. The Pope 



74 Gregory VII. 

enjoyed the delights of life at Lucca ; but he, intent on 
effecting his great scheme, pursued the war against the de- 
posed Pope, Cadolaus ; set Duke Godfrey to keep the Nor- 
mans in check ; gave the Bohemian King the right to wear 
a mitre ; sent legates to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark ; 
kept a continual watch upon the German Emperor; and 
fomented or originated quarrel, usurpation, and conquest 
everywhere. He unsettled all, that in the re-settlement his 
schemes might have a place. 

The Cerdic dynasty, which for five centuries had ruled in 
England, had at last run its course. Edward the Confessor 
was childless. Two claimants aimed at the sovereignty ; 
Harold, the chosen of the English people, and William, 
(afterwards the Conqueror,) the nominee of Hildebrand, who 
secured the Pope's sanction to his attempt to acquire the 
throne of England. Harold was crowned in St Paul's, 
London, on the day of Edward's death, (5th January 1066,) 
with general acceptance ; but on the 14th October of the 
same year he was, after a dauntless fight, slain at Senlac, 
near Hastings, in a war against the invasion of William. 
So perished 

"The noblest and the last 

Of Saxon kings ; save one, the noblest he — 

The last of all;" 

and Duke William, under the banner of St Peter, was hailed 
as conqueror and as king. He presented Harold's battle- 
flag and a portion of the spoil to his patron the Pope ; and 
was crowned on Christmas - day, 1066, in Westminster 
Abbey, by Aldred, archbishop of York. Hildebrand praised 
the Conqueror enthusiastically ; but politicly endeavoured 
to subjugate the clergy of England to the Romish Church. 
To effect this, he sent legates from Rome, who deposed 



Britain s Opposition to Papacy. 75 

curates, abbots, bishops, and archbishops, on the plea of 
illegal ordination ; but really with the intent of substituting 
clergy devoted to William's cause, and so to preserve by 
wrong what had been won by war. On the deposition of 
Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, 1070, Lanfranc, at the 
urgent solicitation of Hildebrand, accepted the appointment, 
and did his best to Romanise the English Church. Hilde- 
brand felt considerable complacency in reflecting on this 
signal victory of his astutely laid plans, for Lanfranc was 
one of the most notable controversialists of that age. On 
going to Rome to receive the pallium, — a short white cloak 
of lambs' wool, with a red cross over the shoulders and down 
the back, which was given by the Popes as the outward 
symbol of ecclesiastical dignity, — Alexander II. and his 
archdeacon conferred on Lanfranc double honours, and suc- 
ceeded for a time in procuring homage to the Primate of 
the Catholic Church from a people who had been more 
remarkable for resistance than submission to the Pope. By 
force, fraud, connivance, or intrigue, Hildebrand generally 
gained his object : no difficulty could daunt, and no impedi- 
ment arrest him in his course. His position about this time 
is indicated in these lines, from a satire by his friend, Petrus 
Damianus, viz. : — 

" Papam rite colo, sed te prostratus adoro ; 
Tu facis hunc dominum, te facit ipse Deum." * 

This Damianus was a man of singular genius, ability, and 
power; of great activity of mind and vehemence of thought. 
He was almost the rival of Hildebrand, who, however, held 
him in leading-strings. They had sworn to co-operate in 
making the Papal throne the greatest of all earthly powers. 

* I worship the Pope ceremoniously, but I adore thee submissively. 
Thou makest this man lord : he makes thee God. 



J6 Gregory VII. 

They often quarrelled, but always became reconciled. In 
early life he had, in cloistered monkhood, as Dante says, 

" Fed his soul with thoughts contemplative ;" 

but in his latter years he stood before kings. He was de- 
puted by the ever-vigilant Hildebrand to preside at the 
Council of Mayence, and to decide upon the proposed di- 
vorce of Henry IV. from his wife Bertha, who, after four 
years of married life, was childless. Damianus denied the 
suit, and Hildebrand declared marriage indissoluble from 
any cause except incestuous intercourse. The Archbishop 
of Ravenna, who had withstood the papal usurpations, died 
under the*severest excommunications, and his people rose 
in revolt against this harsh treatment. Damianus was sent 
to appease the tumult, and to absolve the people from the 
anathemas under which they were laid. He successfully 
accomplished his duty, and then died. Hildebrand by this 
event was rivalless. 

Of one tool, Annone, the abductor of Henry, he got rid 
by relegating him to his office of bishop of Cologne, with 
such extraordinary powers as made him, in effect, the Pope 
of Germany. Hildebrand was as unscrupulous, when it 
suited his own ends, in giving as in taking. 

About this time, too, (107 1,) Hildebrand inaugurated a 
great architectural reform at Rome, by repairing, restoring, 
and decorating the ancient churches, and building new ones. 
The Pope embraced the same idea, and built the cathedral 
of Lucca; and Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, erected 
there the earliest Gothic church. This the Pope consecrated 
as soon as completed : and then journeyed, for pleasure, 
along the borders of the Neapolitan territory, while Hilde- 
brand went off, sword in hand, to oust the usurping Normans 



Passion and its Consequences. 77 

from the Papal dominions. In this object, by the aid of the 
troops of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, Hildebrand was 
entirely successful, and compelled the checkmated invaders 
to retire from the Holy See. In return for the help Matilda 
gave him, he nominated Guibert, the Italian chancellor of 
Henry IV., to the archbishopric of Ravenna, a man at once 
ambitious and crafty, and therefore dangerous \ but Hilde- 
brand could not yet afford to despise the possessor of an 
army, and a lady devoted to his service. Things were now, 
however, ripening apace for a change. 

Henry IV., released from ecclesiastical tutelage, became 
rampant against the aggressions of the Church. His de- 
spotic tendency developed itself in perverse opposition to 
the priesthood ; and he exercised a haughty tyranny over 
his subjects. Hildebrand delightedly saw the workings of 
this alienating and impolitic absolutism, and hinted to his 
subjects the possibility of gaining redress by an appeal to 
Rome. The princes of Saxony complained to the Pope 
about his arrogance. Hildebrand persuaded Alexander to 
threaten the King. This made him furious. Wrath blinded 
him to consequences, and he cast aside the yoke of the 
Church. In actual stubbornness, he compelled the clergy 
of Saxony and Thuringia to pay him one-half of the tithes ; 
and he repudiated the election of Anselmo, bishop of Lucca, 
which the Pope had confirmed. These resolves brought on 
a crisis. The passions which drove Henry blindly on to his 
purposes, roused the resentment of his Saxon subjects to 
inveteracy and revolt. The all-subduing schemes of Hilde- 
brand had been successful everywhere. This reckless con- 
duct on the part of Henry alone was wanting to give him 
cause of quarrel .with apparent right upon his side. There was 
now no object to be gained by further delay. It was the last 



7 8 Gregory VI L 






act in the drama, whose denouement was to be the elevation 
of the Papacy to the pinnacle of earthly power, prerogative, 
and administration. At that hour, no one should occupy 
the supreme chair except him who possessed the inexorable 
will by which all things had been so arranged and subdued 
— the master-soul of the history of that age. The hour for 
striking the last blow, and of stepping upon a throne to 
which the world was subject, had now come, and on 21st 
April 1073, Pope Alexander II. died— the instrument was 
cast from the hand that had wielded it. 

Amid the palpitating of all hearts, intrigue and gold did 
their work. A shower of largesses fell throughout Rome \ 
a tumult arose among the people ; and the cardinals, in 
terror, chose the favourite of the mob — and their own 
master — Primate of the Church ; and " being assembled in 
the church of St Peter in Vinculis," did, "in the year 1073 
of the incarnation of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, on 
the 2 2d of April, the day of the burial of Pope Alexander 
Second, of blessed memory," there and then " elect as shep- 
herd and high Pontiff, and true Vicar of Christ, the arch- 
deacon Hildebrand, a man of great learning and true piety; 
of prudence, justice, and constancy in religion; modest, 
sober, chaste ; master in his own house ; hospitable to the 
poor; and nobly brought up in the bosom of the holy 
Mother Church, from his tenderest years to his present age ; 
learned ; whom we wish, in truth, to preside, with the same 
power which Peter once exercised, over the Church of God." 
So runs the decree. Hildebrand, escorted by the soldiers 
of Tuscany, and greeted with the acclamations of the 
populace, accepted the tiara, and (to imply the legitimacy 
of the Pontiff — his friend and patron, Gregory VI. — whom 
Henry III. had exiled) he assumed as his pontifical title 



Rome the Centre of 'Europe's Politics. 79 

Gregory VII. The unflinching, earnest, and crafty labours 
of a lifetime of politic statesmanship and unscrupulous 
worldly obstinacy gained their reward; the long coveted 
purple swathed his form ; and, " after having prepared every- 
thing to suit his wishes, he stepped into the papal chair the 
moment he was ready," determined no longer to allow the 
Church to be regarded as the handmaiden of the empires of 
the earth, and to claim for her the supreme right of being 
head over all — the sun in the firmament of potentates — the 
president in the great theocracy of the universe. 

Henry was exceedingly wroth at this unauthorised election, 
and sent his faithful adherent, Count Eberhard, to protest 
against any election to which he was not a consenting party. 
Gregory pleaded that the Papacy had been forced upon 
him ; and that he had delayed his consecration till he had 
received the approval of the Emperor, to whom he had sent 
an envoy. Henry, knowing his opponent's energy and 
power, and being then engaged in attempting to suppress 
the Saxon revolt, was contented with this acknowledgment 
of his Imperial claims, and sent a representative to assist 
at the consecration of Gregory VII., which took place 29th 
June 1073. 

Rome was again the centre of European politics. It had 
before conquered and reigned \ it was now to overrule — to 
diffuse the animation of its influence throughout the kingdoms 
of the earth, itself peerless, companionless, and irresistible. 
The very pulses of policy were in her acts. The theory of 
a theocracy is sublime ; but with earthly agencies it is a 
visionary impracticality. The power of a universal spiritual 
supremacy, seconded in its ascendancy by the most eminent 
secular sovereignty, may be omnipotently but can scarcely 
be beneficially wielded. For the management of the secular 



So Gregory VIL 

concerns of his theocratic domination Gregory had sedu- 
lously prepared, and he had girt himself up to the height of 
his great purpose. He had Norman feudatories in the 
south ) Tuscan auxiliaries in the north ; France was sub- 
missive ; England respectful, though resistant ; Spain tacitly 
subject He had brought about revoltful complaints from 
Suabia, Bavaria, and Carinthia against his chief secular an- 
tagonist, Henry IV. ; and he had subjugated, by a free be- 
stowal of power and place, many of the Lombardese clergy. 
So far, intrigue had given his policy hopefulness. He saw 
his way clearly to the effecting of his life-long aim, and in- 
stantly set about it. 

In a few weeks subsequent to his consecration, Gregory 
summoned a council at the Lateran. It was a success. 
Never, since the palmy days of the old Empire, had so 
many grandees of Church and State assembled in council. 
His machinations were effectual. A decree was passed, for- 
bidding marriage to priests, commandin 2; the wedded to put 
away their wives, and ordaining that no layman should 
assist at, or regard as sacred, any act of worship performed 
by a married priest. Rebukes, menaces, excommunications, 
ruthless persecutions, compelled obedience to this austere 
edict. Simoniacal traffic in ecclesiastical dignities was also 
prohibited, under similar disabilities ; and lay investiture was 
strictly forbidden. Churchmen were to be the lieges only 
of the papal sovereignty, and the right to benefices was to 
be valid on receipt of ordination from an ecclesiastical supe- 
rior ; so that the whole Church was brought under vassalage 
to the Pontiff. 

Against Robert Guiscard, Gregory marched with 10,000 
men, and Guiscard retreated in fear. He next projected 
an attack upon the Saracens, to win Jerusalem in a crusade, 



The Wisdom of the Serpent. 81 

and to unite the Eastern and Western Churches. With this 
ostensible object, he gathered an army of 50,000 men, and 
thus flattered his friends and terrified his enemies. The 
Church was filled with tumults. The Milanese clergy, the 
Gallic bishops, the Synods of Erfurth and Lucca, resisted the 
anti-marital enactment — blood flowed, and internal disorder 
abounded. Groans and curses were heard everywhere, 
and every combustible material was aggravated into flame. 
France was threatened, England soothed, Venice flattered, 
Denmark patronised, Robert Guiscard anathematised, Rus- 
sia temporised with, Kungary received a sovereign from 
Gregory, and Spain was taken under the care of the papal 
hierarch. To humiliate and depress all before the 
Church was the one constant and unvarying aim of Gregory. 
In the determination to effect submission, he was inex- 
orable. He was intent on regulating at will the polity of 
Europe. 

The weakness of the Empire was the opportunity of the 
Church. Otho of Nordheim, the Cromwell of Saxony, 
had defeated Henry, and his crown had been offered to 
Rudolph of Suabia. In his anxiety to subdue the revolt of 
the Saxons, Henry was willing to purchase the neutrality of 
Gregory at any price; — he paid too dear a one. He sub- 
mitted, unremonstratingly, to every encroachment. This 
much was gained for the Popedom, but no countervailing 
help was vouchsafed. Indeed, Gregory knew that only 
while the combatants were actually engaged in hostilities to 
the death could he hope to take his next move in the intri- 
cate game of papal diplomacy. 

This move was another Lateran Council. There the in- 
vestiture question was emphatically settled. Henry treated 
all resistance with contempt. Complaints hurried in to the 

F 



82 Gregory VII 

Romish Vicar of Christ, regarding the crimes, public and 
private, of Henry, towards and among the Saxons, and 
Gregory summoned Henry to appear to answer to these 
charges. On Christmas Eve, 1075, an attempt was made 
to assassinate Gregory while he was on his way to worship 
at the shrine of the Holy Mary. Cencius, the assassin, con- 
fessed, and was (magnanimously'?) forgiven. It was asserted 
that Cencius was Henry's tool. It is far more likely that 
it was a prearranged plot of Gregory's own. It imparted 
the bitterness of personality to the contest between the Va- 
tican and the Empire. Gregory's citation was disregarded 
by Henry; but to the indictment of sacrilege, personal 
un cleanness, and assassination, made against him by the 
Pope, Henry answered by a countercharge of base birth, 
murder, simony, demon-worship, profligacy, and profanity, 
against Gregory ; and on these counts carried a decision of 
the Synod of Worms against the Vicegerent of God. This 
decision was greedily countersigned by numerous sufferers 
from Gregory's recent anti-marital imperiousness. 

In Lent, 1076, Gregory sat on his throne in the Vatican, 
among the clerical and lay supporters of his august claims. 
Before this new senate, Henry had been called to attend as 
a criminal. Roland, an ambassador from the Synod of 
Worms, appeared instead, and thus addressed the Pope : — 
" The sovereign and the prelates of Germany and Italy 
send through me this command, — Descend, without delay 
from St Peter's chair, and abandon thine usurpation over 
the Church. To such honour none can be admitted with- 
out imperial sanction." Then, turning to the assembly, 
he said : — " To you, brethren, it is commanded that, at the 
Peast of Pentecost, ye appear before the King, and from 
him receive a Pope and father for the Church, — this same 



The Church Overawes the Empire. &$ 

Gregory being a wolf only." The Prefect of Rome arrested 
the intruder, but Gregory saved him from the rage of the 
convention. Henry was thereafter solemnly and unani- 
mously deposed, and his subjects released from their oaths 
and allegiance. Europe was astonished at the doctrine 
and its application. Hildebrand was too politic to take a 
false step. He knew the state of Saxony, Henry's weak- 
ness, and the general discontent of the subjects of the 
Empire, and he had calculated on the awe with which such 
a decree would be received. Henry was deserted every- 
where, and treated as an outcast. His soul was fevered 
with hate and vengeance. With the audacity of despair, 
he flung himself on the loyalty of his people, and the 
burghers and peasantry rallied to his standard. Henry's 
contumacy excited the ire of the Pope, and he issued a 
rescript for the election of a new Emperor. In October 

1076, a Diet met at Tribur, or Oppenheim, at which it was 
resolved by the princes of the Empire that if by February 2, 

1077, Henry did not present himself submissively before 
the Pontiff, confess his sins, and gain absolution, the elec- 
tion of a new king should be immediately expedited. The 
Lombard bishops excommunicated Gregory at the Council 
of Pavia. Henry resolved on appearing before the Pope 
in Italy, rather than in Germany — in private, rather than in 
public. He set out, accompanied by his faithful wife, 
Bertha, his son Conrad, and a few attendants, in Novem- 
ber, and journeyed during winter, in most disastrous wea- 
ther, from Spires, through by-paths over the summits of the 
Alps, and into the intricacies of the Apennines, that he 
might intercept Gregory on his way to the Diet of Augs- 
burg. He found him at Canossa, in Apulia, the favourite 
residence of the Countess Matilda. Here a number of 



84 Gregory VII. 

German bishops were doing penance in cells, on bread and 
water, for their insubordination to the Holy See; and hither, 
unarmed and unattended, came Henry as a suppliant to the 
spiritual despot. A cold January frost chilled the blood 
when Henry toiled up the rocky footway to Canossa's walls. 
As he approached, the outer gates of the fortress opened to 
him, but the door of the third entrance was moveless. In the 
bitter cold — less bitter than Gregory's tyranny — stiff, faint, 
tod weary, Henry stood in the court for three days. At length, 
tamed for a time by hunger, cold, and degradation, on the 
fourth day he was admitted to the presence of the haughty 
and dominant Pontiff, to cry for mercy. What a thrill of 
ecstasy swept along the tense cordage of that old man's 
frame when at his feet — the feet of another carpenter's son — 
the hereditary lord of the mightiest Empire in Christendom 
knelt, crushed and awed, before him ! It was a lifetime's 
recompense. Having exposed him to the contempt of men, 
Gregory restored Henry to the communion of the Church, 
but meanwhile held him bound to abstain from the exercise 
or enjoyment of any kingly prerogative. He took the con- 
secrated bread of the Eucharist, and, protesting his own 
blamelessness, partook of it, saying, " May Almighty God, 
this very day, strike me with sudden death if I be really 
guilty!" and then challenged Henry to do likewise. Henry 
recoiled from the test, but was absolved. The iron had, 
however, entered Henry's soul ; rage, shame, dishonour, 
stung him to effort, and he determined upon being once 
again " every inch a king." His illusory awe had departed, 
and with no enervation of will did he pursue his future 
designs. 

The German princes, at Gregory's instigation, elected 
Rudolph as Emperor. Henry returned to maintain his 



The Calamities of War. 85 

rights, and foi three years a devastating war was kept up, 
with alternating success. Gregory, glad to see Germany 
humbled, temporised between the parties, pretending me- 
diation, but giving none, until, in 1080, at Mulhausen, the 
arbitrement of the sword declared for Rudolph ; and then 
he re-excommunicated Henry, and sent his opponent a 
crown, with the inscription, " Peter gives this crown to 
Rudolph." 

Henry, at a council held in Brixen, again also deposed 
the Pope, and caused Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, to 
be chosen in his stead, with the title of Clement III. Two 
pontiffs and two emperors now contested for power. On 
the banks of Elster, Henry, in 1080, encountered Rudolph, 
whose army was led by the illustrious Otho of Nordheim. 
Rudolph's cause unambiguously triumphed, but it was a 
bootless victory. On the field, Tasso's hero, Godfrey of 
Bouillon, thrust the spear of the imperial banner into Ru- 
dolph's side. His right hand was hacked off, and he died 
exclaiming, "That was the hand with which, uplifted, I 
swore fidelity to Henry." This was looked on as a judg- 
ment of God against him. 

The victorious and exultant Henry marched to Rome 
three times in three successive years, besieged it, and re- 
duced his implacable enemy, Gregory, to such straits, that 
he was compelled to shut himself up in the castle of St 
Angelo, and to apply for help to William of England, who, 
however, excused himself. In these contests, cities were 
destroyed, lands devastated, churches spoiled, convents 
ravaged, and all the districts around Rome were subjected 
to grievous calamities. Though a new king of Germany 
was crowned and consecrated, Henry, with a bloodhound's 
pertinacity, remained in Italy, resolved to subdue the Pope. 



86 Gregory VII. 

Pride and pity strove for the mastery in Gregory's heart; 
but his strong belief that 

" 'Tis not the iron arm, 'tis the strong will 
Gains in that game wherein we mortals 
Play life against life, " 

made him hold out, even when, on the 30th Nov. 1083, a 
pontifical synod strove to persuade him to recognise Henry, 
that there might be peace. He spoke eloquently, humbly, 
yet boldly, and refused. He dismissed the synod with his 
benediction, but resolved to bear the " hazard of the die," 
and "endure unto the end." 

Fate did not now delay. On 21st March 1084, Henry 
entered Rome in triumph. He took possession of the 
Lateran, the bridges, and the strongholds. Gregory fled to 
his fastness, St Angelo. Henry was crowned in Rome by 
Guibert, who was also consecrated Pontiff there. The 
Caesar of the Church alone was defiant ; in the very crisis 
of his life foiled and baffled, he was yet unsubdued in spirit. 
He could not be the craven to supplicate mercy from 
Henry. A few hours, and St Angelo must yield to inner 
discord and to outward siege. A shout arose. Robert 
Guiscard, now reconciled to Gregory, approached. Henry 
fled — his thirst for vengeance unslaked. Rome was burnt 
and sacked; but the Pontiff was released, though at the 
cost of two-thirds of the pontifical city. 

Gregory reassumed his sway ; called a new council ; re- 
fulmined against Guibert and Henry, and then left the scene 
of the late heartrending devastation for Salerno, under the 
safe conduct of Guiscard. The civil wars having been 
brought to a truce, a pestilence supervened upon a famine. 
The ordination, Death, went out against Gregory. He 
sickened of the plague, and died on 25th May 1085, with 



His Character and Work. 87 

this epigram upon his lips, — " I have loved righteousness, 
and hated iniquity; and therefore I die in exile." The 
cardinals and bishops who stood around his couch had pre- 
vailed upon him to pardon all his enemies, except Guibert 
and Henry. He had given his mitre to Anselm of Lucca, 
and named him successor to the primacy. Enclosed in a 
marble urn, after a papal reign of nearly twelve years, and 
in the sixty-fifth year of his age, he was buried in the cathe- 
dral church of St Matthew, at Salerno, and there he lay, 
memorialless, till John of Procida, the enactor of "The 
Sicilian Vespers," two centuries thereafter, built over his 
urn a magnificent chapel named St Michael. Gregory was 
canonised in 1584 ; a statue of him was erected at Salerno, 
1 6 10 ; and his name was razed from the catalogue of saints 
by Napoleon I. It has since been reinscribed. 

Thus passed away a man of singular courage, zeal, and 
genius ; the vanquisher of feudalism and imperialism ; the 
creator of that triple-crowned dominion which claimed 
power in heaven, on earth, and in hell. A great, world- 
centralizing spirit, who was quickened with a Divine 
thought of strange significance, but who, in the sublime 
yearnings of a mighty purpose, forgot that it is not given to 
man " to do evil that good may come." In the very means 
adopted to attain his great end, the seeds of failure were 
implanted. In the celibacy of the clergy, and the power 
of excommunication and indulgence, the Reformation lay 
like a germ. In the flourishing outgrowth of the Church, 
and in the supereminent claims over all sovereignties on 
which Gregory staked the very being of the Church of 
Christ, there were embedded the causes which, in our own 
day — eight centuries after — have led to many changes in 
European life, — the unity of Italy, the fall of the Pope's 



88 Gregory VII. 

temporal power, the patriotic grandeur of Garibaldi. So 
true is it that God's purposes underlie and yet control all 
human action ; that " the lot is cast into the lap, but the 
whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." Those who com- 
prehend the true philosophy of history have no fear for the 
future : they know that 

' ' The hour shall come, 
When they who think to bind the ethereal spirit — 
Who, like the eagle cowering o'er his prey, 
Watch with quick eye, and strike and strike again, 
If but a sinew vibrate — shall confess 
Their wisdom folly. Even now the flame 
Bursts forth, where once it burnt so gloriously, 
And, dying, left a splendour like the day ; 
That, like the day, diffused itself, and still 
Blesses the earth : — the light of genius, virtue, 
Greatness in thought, and act, contempt of death, 
Godlike example. " 

Dante, WyclifFe, Luther, Loyola, Calvin, Pascal, Wolsey, 
Philip II., and even Garibaldi, are, in a great measure, in- 
explicable enigmas of life, unless we know and recognise 
the life-work of the first wearer of the triune diadem of a 
Supreme Papacy, Gregory VII., and acknowledge his place 
in history as an Epoch Man. 




Roger Bacon — Experimental 
Science. 



A-D. 1 2 I4-I294. 



1 1 had a vision. — In an antique dome 

A holy man I saw, with cap and gown ; 
Around the walls were many a ponderous tome 

With hasp and hinge — all schoolmen of renown. 
Alembics, crucibles, metallic ores, 

And wondrous things from air, and earth, and sea, 
Were hung on high, or strewn upon the floors ; 

As if he wished combined with him to be 
All miracles of matter and of mind ; 
And he did study wisdom till behind 
His fellow-men were left ; and then they knew 

That he had leagued with demons — knew it well ; 
And, fearing him, condemn' d ; then, reckless, threw 

His aged limbs to wither in a cell." — D. M. Moir. 



" Bacon. Men call me Bacon. 

" Vandermast. Lordly thou look's:, as if that thou wert learn'd ; 
Thy countenance, as if science held her seat 
Between the circled arches of thy brow." 

Robert Greenis " Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay '," 1 591. 



1 That proto-martyr of science in Christendom — Roger Bacon." 

Samuel Brown. 



" Roger Bacon, by far the truest philosopher of the middle ages." 

Hallam. 



u The Franciscan — Roger Bacon — stood alone in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, on account of his taste and genius for physics, optics, and astro- 
nomy ." — Cousin. 



" Look at the history of the lives of our great philosophers, and you 
will find that their progress has usually been a struggle against the pre- 
judices of those by whom they were surrounded." — Robert Hunt. 



EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE, 




^jXPERIMENTALISM is the name of the act and 
art of testing thought that it may become know- 
ledge. Its first step is observation. Things, on 
being noticed, excite the activity of the mind, and call into 
working the inner necessity of the soul — inquiry. The way 
at first is " dim and perilous." The apparent and accidental 
mingle so constantly with the real and the inherent — the 
enveloping and concomitant so frequently cause us to pass 
unheeded the essential and the central, that cognition is 
puzzled, and knowledge becomes difficult, of attainment. 
To see what is rather than what seems, is the highest and 
noblest exercise of the intellectual faculties. It may be — 
ay, it is — possible to construct fine systems of nature out 
of pure thought, excited by experience, but they will rarely 
bear the test of methodical investigation ; i.e., gradual, suc- 
cessive, and forethoughtful induction — the only true means 
by which transient external experiences can be seen, and 
known, and submitted to the understanding. Thus only 
can the restless, shifting, changeful, and phenomenal be 
steadied before the gaze of the soul, and brought to reveal 
their secrets. The union of thought and action is the 
highest life; it yields also the most exalting and exalted 
truth. When the logic of pure thought harmonises with and 



92 Roger Bacon. 

explains the phenomena of nature or mind, and the oft 
and properly-tested phenomena of nature sustain and 
bear witness to the decisions of logic, then there is a cer- 
tainty of truth ; wherever there is an absence of either there 
is a probability of error. Facts, even when rightly observed, 
are not truths ; they only yield them ; they are the words of 
a sentence which thought translates and embodies. Truth 
is shaped, moulded, evolved by the conjoint working of 
reason and fact. Phenomena project a flowing stream of 
sensations into the mind ; 

" And when the stream 

Which overflow'd the mind has pass'd away, 

A consciousness remains that it has left 

Deposited upon the silent shore 

Of memory images and precious thoughts? 

The true meaning of facts is ascertained by experiment — by 
trying whether the thoughts supposed to represent them 
really do so in the very sense in which the mind conceives 
them. The systematised facts of experience and reason are 
science. 

Science, like theology, has had its martyrs. Nor have 
they been the less truly sufferers for God and truth because 
they have striven to read the first volume of the Divine re- 
velation, while others have pursued the study of the second. 
All truth is of God, and leads to Him. To know nature in 
her causes and her ends is to know God in one of His 
manifestations, and needs neither preclude nor supersede 
Scripture, in which the soul must trust. Nature is no surly 
step-sister to the soul ; she rather encourages and entices 
man to give full play to those 

" Few traces 

Of a diviner nature which look out 

Through his corporeal baseness." 



Time and Circumstance. 93 

And as she feels " the need of linking some delight to 
knowledge," she makes all true cognition impart " a sense, 
a feeling that he loses not" — the bliss of learning. 

"Nature ne'er deserts the wise and purej 
No plot so narrow, be but nature there, 
No waste so vacant, but may well employ 
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 
Awake." 

To such "fine issues" did she work in Roger Bacon to 
incline him to a course of learning and ingenious studies. 

Man's greatest hindrance to the acquisition of true know- 
ledge has been man. The unswerving pursuit of truth, 
though it is his highest calling, has seldom been man's fa- 
vourite employment Nor have those who devoted them- 
selves to the thorough investigation of the true been often 
made the subjects of the world's homage or its love. The 
plight of humanity would have been woeful indeed had the 
sages of the olden time " ne'er eyed the fruit nor clomb the 
tree" of knowledge, that they might pluck thereof and give 
to their co-mates in life. To be the first who systemati- 
cally taught and practised the active, watchful, and careful 
examination of nature by keen-eyed, curious, and determin- 
ate observation, or well-planned, accurately-adjusted experi- 
ment and precise and definite registration, is an honour of 
no mean kind. To this place Roger Bacon, though long 
misrepresented and uncared for, has now been found worthy 
of elevation ; and it is the purpose of the following bio- 
graphy to show the processes by which time and circum- 
stance formed this man to become one of the marvels of his 
own age, and a worthy inheritor of the world's fame. 

In the year 12 14, Roger Bacon was born near Ilchester, 
an ancient town in Somersetshire, known as the Ischalis of 



94 Roger Bacon. 

the Romans. Of his boyhood we know, and can now learn, 
nothing. Most probably he was "set apart" for the Church 
from his infant years, as he seems to have been early so well 
educated as to receive admission to Oxford in his youth. 
His family was of yeomanry degree. Oxford was at this 
time, according to Hallam, " a school of great resort," 
" second only to Paris in the multitude of its students and' 
the celebrity of its scholastic disputations."" Anthony-a- 
Wood enthusiastically exclaims, regarding these " good old 
times" of his Alma Mater , "What university, I pray, can 
produce an invincible Hales [died 1245], an admirable 
Bacon, an excellent, well-grounded Middleton [died 1304], 
a subtle Scotus [1 265-1308], an approved Burley, a resolute 
Baconthorpe [died 1346], a singular Ockham [died 1347], 
a solid and industrious Holcot, and a profound Bradwardin 
[died 1349], all which persons flourished within the com- 
pass of one century."* The chief teachers in Oxford were 
Franciscans (i.e., followers of Francis of Assisi [1 182-1226], 
founder of a mendicant order of friars 1209,) whose vows 
required poverty, submission, manual labour, study, and 
self-mortification. These orders of friars added greatly to 
the number of the Church, and to the intensity with which 
the scholastic philosophy was studied. The Franciscans 
did not lay so much stress, at their origin, upon their learn- 
ing and philosophy, as on their sanctity, spirituality, and 
humility; but when the competition of orders became 
keener, they were fain to elaborate a form of speculation 
too,t and were desirous of enlisting in their brotherhood as 

* Vol. i., p. 159, a,d. 1 1 68. See Hallam's " Literature of the Middle 
Ages," vol. i., p. 16. 

+ Read on this point Maclean's " Monks and Monasteries. " Lon 
don : Hall, Virtue, & Co. 



Doctor s Degree and Lectureship. 95 

many of the rising thinkers of the day as they could. Bacon 
seems to have been early regarded as a person likely to 
bring renown to the order ; and on his departure from Ox- 
ford to Paris — whose university, as we have stated before, 
was highly famed — he was recommended to a Franciscan 
convent as a residence. In Paris he applied himself dili- 
gently to the acquisition of all the attainable knowledge of 
his time, and distinguished himself so much as to have 
gained a doctor's degree at Paris before the completion of 
his twenty-sixth year — an honour which Oxford willingly 
and at once confirmed. 

On his return, the consideration of the future would natu- 
rally suggest itself, and he w r ould seek the best advice upon 
the subject. The Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grostete 
(Greathead), a learned man, and author of a poem entitled 
" The Handlynge of Sinne," was his friend. As the Uni- 
versity of Oxford was ecclesiastically subject to him, he 
counselled his entrance into the brotherhood of St Francis, 
of which Grostete was himself a member. To this Bacon 
agreed, and was accordingly admitted on taking the requisite 
vows. Just about this period (1244) the earliest known 
statute or charter of privileges granted to the University of 
Oxford as a corporate body was passed — usually quoted as 
"28 Hen. III. Libertates concesscz Chancellario Universitatis 
Oxon" The chancellor or rector of the schools at that 
time derived his authority to teach from the Bishop of Lin- 
coln, and we may suppose that through Grostete's influence 
Bacon received his appointment as a lecturer at Oxford. 

To the duties of this lectureship he devoted himself most 
assiduously. His zeal at first procured him friends, cele- 
brity, and honour. Belonging to that body, "whose [to 
quote their own words, used in 1362] profession it is to pos- 



g6 Roger Bacon. 

sess no wealth/' he was obliged to depend upon the libe- 
rality of friends for the means of carrying out his course of 
instruction ; but the aristocracy of that time were, according 
to the testimony of Anthony-a-Wood, — 

" Moribus egregii, verbo vultuque venusti, 
Ingenio pollent, consilioque vigent : w 

Distinguished in manners, winning in speech and mien. 
They were powerful in intellect, and they increased in wis- 
dom ; and the enthusiasm for war engendered by the era of 
the Crusades had transferred itself to the encouragement of 
study. Hence deserving persons found patrons able and 
willing to assist, not only in founding and endowing " col- 
leges" and "halls/' but in granting aid to scholars to gain 
books or acquire instruments. Bacon's genius inclined to 
truly realistic studies more than to the nominalism of mere 
syllogistics, and for the sake of pursuing these he required 
money as well as learning and leisure. He looked upon 
the appearances presented to the senses by nature as "par- 
ables" intended to have their inner meaning read by the 
soul and transmuted into truth. To know when the mind 
had attained the right and true interpretation of any phe- 
nomenon or set of phenomena, the mind must have a test — 
that test must be constructed by the intellect, capable of 
being operated on by nature, and yet give intimations to 
the senses — be, in fact, experiment. " There are," says he, 
"four principal stumblingblocks in the way of knowledge — 
i, authority; 2, habit; 3, appearances as they present them- 
selves to the vulgar eye ; and 4, concealment of ignorance, 
combined with ostentation of learning." He set about 
overcoming these by refraining from ostentation himself; 
by asking no belief in his dogmas without proof, by pro- 



Range and Extent of his Studies. 97 

ducing such proof as he could, he altered the vulgar concep- 
tions of nature, changed the habits of thinkers, and repudi- 
ated authority. That the labours of this great man were 
not unappreciated we learn from the fact that by the kind- 
ness of friends, despite of his Franciscan vow of poverty, 
he had been enabled, in twenty years, to expend in books, 
experiments, and instruments, no less than 2000 French 
livres, a sum equivalent to ^6000 of our present money, 
but in effective value in purchases worth many times that 
amount. Such a contribution to the success of experimen- 
tal philosophy, in such an age, deserves, indeed demands, 
special remark, and leads one to reflect how powerfully 
Bacon must have influenced his contemporaries to receive 
so significant a mark of their confidence, and such a tribute 
to his ability, as is implied in the placing of such a sum at 
his disposal. 

During these twenty years of teaching and experiment, 
gaining not applause and fame only, but substantial evi- 
dences of favour, Bacon must have seemed to his fellow- 
Franciscans a living testimony to their worthlessness. He 
had made himself intimately acquainted with the Hebrew, 
Arabic, and Greek languages. Indeed, he wrote a grammar 
of the latter tongue, which yet exists in MS. among his 
works, and he was a most accomplished mathematician at 
a time when most students of that science never crossed 
the pons asinorum. Logic, metaphysics, ethics, and theo- 
logy he had minutely investigated, and had treated on many 
matters pertaining to these branches of thought with ability, 
acumen, and originality. Chronology and geography had 
met with an ardent student in him, and he wrote Latin, 
though not with high classicality, yet with an ease, grace, 
and perspicuity uncommon in his age. It was in the depart- 

G 



98 Roger Bacon. 

ment of scientific research, however, that he specially vindi- 
cated his right to a name and place among the heirs of 
memory. Astronomy, astrology, medicine, alchemy, optics, 
magic, and physical science generally, received attention, 
augmentation, and illustration from the copious resources 
of the Ilchester friar. " So passionate an instinct had he 
for what is positive in science, that in the department of 
nature he actually claimed an equal rank for observation with 
reason; a claim which was advanced again and achieved 
nearly four hundred years after by his more illustrious, but 
not more sagacious namesake, Francis Bacon, the liberator 
of the sciences."* "Roger Bacon distinctly and loudly 
proclaimed the rights of observation ; and in truth, his whole 
school of experimentalists were the accredited and natural 
enemies of the scholastic wranglers." + 

How, indeed, could it be otherwise 1 Monkery, in too 
many cases, had canonised sloth ; he had glorified industry. 
Spinning, spider-like, the meshes of disputation out of their 
own being, they could never advance beyond the circle of 
repetitive dogmatisms, while Bacon toiled, and sweated, and 
dug into the deep quarries of fact, and with most revolu- 
tionary submission to the swart genius of labour, first watched, 
with meditative deference, the processes of nature, and then 
endeavoured to compel from her an articulate and trust- 
worthy authentication of the conceptions which his soul 
had formed from the suggestions which phenomena excited 
in him. Honest, painstaking, and determined, he legislated 
in tliought upon results, and thereafter set to work to bring 
forth from nature that obedience which he sought. Con- 
tinued resistance did not daunt or intimidate him; it only 

* " Lectures and Essays," by Samuel Brown, vol. i., p. 161. 
f Ibid., p. 117 



Barren Scholasticism. 99 

made him doubtful of the accuracy of his own views, and 
caused him to reinvestigate the determinations of his theo- 
retic faculty concerning phenomena, their causes, opera- 
tions, and effects. To the compiling, annotating, commen- 
tating, authority-worshipping crowd who filled the cloisters 
of Franciscan convents, or waved their gray gowns within 
the precincts of collegiate halls, this devotion to high pur- 
suits, this toilsome career, this unresting activity in the 
search after truth, and this self-denial of those enticing plea- 
sures which interest other men, could scarcely fail to be 
distasteful, not to say detestable. Their blank idleness, or 
dull stagnation, or interminable labour after trivialities; 
their painful ponderosity of thriftless thought ; their careless 
scorn of solemn aims and aspirations ; and their distrustful 
or perplexed interpretations of nature, its phenomena, sig- 
nificance, and author, were put to shame, and virtually 
rebuked by the fierce energy and persevering striving with 
which he grappled with the mysteries and difficulties of 
investigation, and held to his purpose of informing himself, 
if possible, of the secrets, and processes, and ongoings of the 
universe. His supernatural consciousness of strength tacitly 
convicted them of cowardice or treachery — cowardice in 
failing bravely to dare all labour to gain truth, or treachery 
in surrendering the choicest and most gratifying right of 
humanity for the enjoyments of sloth, ease, pride, pomp, 
power, or momentary glory. Hence it happens, as he 
says, that " both in science and in common life we see a 
thousand falsehoods for one truth.'" Men have hitherto 
neglected " to search, discover, and dissect, and prove," 
and hence they do not and cannot learn or know the spirit' s 
rapt communion with the verities of science, the joy of mora] 
being, or the blest delight of holy feeling and religious thought. 



ioo Roger Bacon. 

The continuous sarcasm of a well-spent life excited hate 
and envy. Besides, he was the friend of Robert Grostete, 
the superior prelate of the diocese, a man not only learned 
himself, but the liberal patron of a studious life in others. 
But though a brother of the order of St Francis, bound by 
oath to ecclesiastical submission, Grostete had hardily and 
stoutly opposed the aggressions, secret or open, of the Pope 
upon the rights and liberties of the British Church, and had 
made himself conspicuous as a terrible resistant of the undue 
exertion of the fatherly power of him who held the headship 
of Christendom. This strong-nerved prelate would not suffer 
the installation of the boy-nephew of Pope Innocent IV. as 
a prebend of the diocese of Lincoln, and endured the wrath 
of his Holiness in the shape of excommunication. Yet for 
all this, Bacon's friendship did not halt, nor did his grati- 
tude stop short at the command of his papal Holiness. Did 
he not, then, more than sympathise with him in his antagon- 
ism to the Pope? nay, did he not, in all probability, coin- 
cide in heart and soul with Grostete in his abominable 
hostility to the Father of the Church ? Room for suspicion 
there certainly was; but Bacon soon gave more, for he bore 
testimony to the vileness of life and character of many of 
his confreres, and accused them, in plainly-spoken terms, of 
practices excessively alien to the purposes of their order, 
and the vows they had taken. 

In 1253, when Bacon was verging on his fortieth year, 
Grostete, his protector, patron, friend, and fellow-witness 
against the crimes and follies of his order, died. The hate 
entertained for his late friend was added to the envy which 
they felt towards himself; the brethren of his order became 
Bacon's chief foes. Another superior arose, who knew not 
Bacon, except as the exposer of the vices of his order, and 



Causes of Scientific Error. 101 

as the object of malignity on account of his strange studies, 
singular learning, gigantic laboriousness, free speech, pecu- 
niary gainings and spendings, wonderful reputation, admir- 
able skill, and voluminous writings on all subjects, sacred, 
secular, and profane, if not, as it now began to be whispered, 
absolutely suggested by that wicked one who spell-binds the 
soul by jugglery, cheats the senses, mocks the resolves, and 
wraps up men's thoughts in the impervious veil of sorcery. 
What could such an official do, as an honest man bent on 
upholding the reputation of his order, except interdict the 
lectures of Bacon, prohibit the circulation of his writings, 
and zealously guard against the publicity of his inventions 
or discoveries % The austerities of the order were then put 
in force, and fetters bound the body of this man of chainless 
mind. In his prison he was denied intercourse with any of 
his friends, and was frequently exposed to such privations as 
with difficulty to have escaped death from the combined 
effects of hunger and cold. He endured patiently, yet not 
hopelessly, the priestly persecution to which his love of 
science and of truth had made him captive, and continued 
to "bide his time" in trust and calmness. 

Nor was it much to be wondered at that, in the thirteenth 
century, the person who could assert, in the face of the 
highest authority in Christendom, that " we must not stick 
to what we hear and read, but must examine most strictly 
the opinions of our ancestors, that we may add what is 
lacking, and correct what is wrong, but with all modesty and 
consideration," should be regarded as a dangerous person ; 
but when he added to this the grievous accusation of his 
age contained in these and other similar expressions — viz., 
" Men presume to teach before they have learnt" . . . 
" Appearances alone rule them, and they care not what they 



102 Roger Bacon. 

know, but what they are thought to know by a senseless 
multitude," — what howling and gnashing of teeth and ex- 
haustless rage was too little for the reprehension of the 
hardy man, who suffered from no glut of friendship % And 
so they gave him the first fruits and fair sample of the scorn 
which the saintly churchmen of the middle ages felt for 
truth, and all truth's worshippers. But he walked valiantly 
along under the guardianship of Captivity, keeping Medita- 
tion as his solitary friend, and being enriched by ripe and 
rich reflections on the observations he had made, and the 
experiences he had garnered in his soul during the days of 
his activity and freedom. Thus was he ready, when a bet- 
ter day dawned upon his fortune, to pour forth profusely the 
ideas, suggestions, and details which fill so marvellous a page 
in the literary and scientific annals of the century in which 
he lived, and could offer to a friendly Pope, on brief notice, 
the Opus Majus — at once his defence and highest glory. 

The ostensible charge preferred against Bacon was the 
study of magic, probably coupled with a vague assertion of a 
violation of his vow of poverty, borne evidence to by his ap- 
parently extravagant expenditure in pursuing his experimental 
studies. In reply to the first, he issued his tractates, " Con- 
cerning the Wonderful Power of Art and Nature," and 
" Concerning the Secret Operations of Art and Nature, and 
the Absurdity of Magic." Regarding the second, St Bona- 
ventura, the seraphic doctor, who was then general of the 
Franciscans, having published an expository treatise on that 
portion of a friar's vow, intended, most probably, as an in- 
direct condemnation of Bacon, we are informed by Vossius 
that he wrote a book, in which the reasonings of St Bona- 
ventura were controverted, thus indirectly also maintaining 
the rightfulness of his conduct in this matter, and justifying 



The Church Dislikes Science, 103 

himself before the jury of the learned of his time. The 
general ignorance of the clergy then was so great, that any 
rumour of devil-doings received instant credence, and Bacon 
shared the odium of a charge of magic with William of Au- 
vergne and Albert the Great of his own era — an era in which 
Anthony-a-Wood characterises the clergy as "men who knew 
no property of the circle except that of keeping out the 
devil, and imagined that the angles of a triangle would 
wound religion." It is scarcely credible, however, that the 
acute minds who governed these Orders and the Church 
could have failed to perceive that Experimentalism, by its 
appeal to reason as the ultimate judge of truth, was likely 
to undermine the entire fabric they had so painstakingly 
raised \ and they but accepted of the popular rumour as the 
foundation of their charge, and as a cloak for their deeper 
cause of detestation. He who gave it as his opinion that 
we must with all our strength, prefer reason to custom, and 
the opifiions of the wise and good to the perceptions of the 
common herd, while he admonished his pupils and readers 
to hear freely " opinions contrary to established usage," 
could not but be a perilous friend or a terrible enemy. And 
the mere fruits of Experimentalism would seem, or could be 
made to appear, as the very snares of Satan to allure the 
soul from her repose in the bosom of the Church to self- 
thought and natural investigations. Strong cause, therefore, 
was there for crushing, if possible, the first who ventured to 
step out of the harmless circle of scholasticism into the 
wider, freer region of phenomena and nature ; seeking by 
reason, helped as best it might be, to unfold to trfe gaze of 
triumphant thought the true secrets which underlie the 
appearances around man, and quieting the tumult and 
anxiety of thought by calling nature herself to bear witness 



io4 Roger Bacon. 

to the accuracy of the deductions of reason. With such 
apprehensions as these, it is scarcely matter for wonder that 
even works bearing such titles as " Some Contributions to 
the Art of Chemistry," " The Mirror of Alchemy," " The 
Mathematical Mirror," &c, when written by a person of 
dubious orthodoxy, like Roger Bacon, were looked on 
with suspicion, and restrained from circulation. Had he 
not aided and abetted the resistance to the Pope by Robert 
Grostete, defamed his order, controverted the opinions of 
his general % and did he not elevate reason above all other 
powers, and assert its supremacy in all investigations, while 
by his example, labours, and life he brought discredit on 
others, by aiming at becoming more than they were willing 
to work to become 1 Let the Church set its heel at once 
on the atrocious offender who ranks independence among 
the virtues, free thought among human duties, and reasoned 
experiment among the pleasures of life. So, during part of 
the pontificate of Innocent IV., the whole of that of Alex- 
ander IV., and Urban IV., he was held " in durance vile," 
thinking, but in silence ; reasoning, but constrained to keep 
to his own counsel ; and building up a system of thought, 
but without the probability of being able to bring it before 
his compeers, or bequeath it to posterity. 

Such things could not remain unknown, nor could think- 
ing minds avoid feeling interested in the man who was bear- 
ing the brunt of papal wrath, and the jealous guardianship 
of his order, that his thoughts might not be breathed upon 
the still, stagnant atmosphere of learning. An excellent 
and accomplished man, Cardinal Fulcodi, bishop of Sabina, 
and papal legate in England, had heard of his life, thoughts, 
doings, sayings, and sufferings, and had expressed an earnest 
wish to see his inventions and to become acquainted 



A Pope's Favour and the Hate of Monks. 105 

s 

with his opinions. The prohibition, however, was im- 
perative and unexceptional, and he was denied permis- 
sion to hold intercourse with Bacon at all. Times 
changed, the papal chair became vacant, and Fulcodi 
was chosen to don the triple crown as Clement IV., in 
the very year of Dante's birth, 1265. Here was Bacon's 
opportunity ; and though he had now crossed the middle 
arch of life, he set himself industriously to the production of 
a work in which he might concisely recite and explain his 
views, his theories, his experiments, and their results. In 
less than two years he had completed his Opus Afajus, and 
it was conveyed direct to Clement IV., most probably by 
John Peckham, a metropolitan Franciscan, who afterwards 
became archbishop of Canterbury. Clement knew well the 
circumstances of Bacon, and had commanded him to send 
this exposition of his system to him, notwithstanding any 
restrictions of his superiors; and in the year 1267 it was in 
his hands. Such a fact could scarcely fail to quicken the 
pulse of the active authorities of his order ; so we find 
that, knowing well its real groundlessness, the charge of 
magical consorting with Satan was now exchanged for the 
ever ready one of heresy. A man who knew Bacon could 
not entertain such a charge for a moment, but it would 
surely go hard with the professors of sophistries if they could 
not, out of the hastily-written production of their pope-fa- 
voured brother, squeeze so much as, if plausibly argued, 
might be construed into proof of heterodoxy in thought or 
expression. But things never came to this issue, for Clement 
IV. was called to the higher tribunal of God in the Novem- 
ber of 1268. For nearly three years the contest for the 
occupancy of the chair distracted attention, and prevented 
a settlement of the question, though it did not diminish the 



io6 Roger Bacon. 

rigorous exactness of the friars. But Bacon retained his in- 
tegrity, and went on with his studies and his writings, revis- 
ing his Opus Majus, and no doubt preparing his defence 
for the time when trial should at last arrive. During ten 
years he received no open molestation, but immediately 
thereafter events took a turn adverse to Bacon, and the 
rancour of his brethren flamed out anew. 

Though it was chiefly as a wonder- worker that the fame 
of Roger Bacon spread and lingered in the minds of men, 
it is as a thinker that we feel most concern for him — as a 
helpful searcher for the right way of attaining truth, and so 
enabling us 

"To fertilise our earthly root, 
And make our branches lift a golden fruit 
Into the bloom of heaven." 

To prove that he was such, we shall endeavour to lay be- 
fore our readers a succinct resumi of his Opus Majus. This 
will show better, we opine, than aught else, " what manner 
of man he was." This work — which, after remaining in 
manuscript in the Oxford library for nearly five centuries, 
was published in London so recently as 1733, under the 
editorial care of Dr Samuel Jebb, a non-juring physician — 
is written in the form of a letter to Pope Clement IV., and 
consists of a series of discourses on the different topics to 
which the friar had directed his attention, and consequently 
repeats in many parts the same facts, reasonings, and ex- 
pressions as we find in other works of his ; thus proving 
that it is the most complete, authoritative, and authentic 
account of his philosophical studies, inventions, and system 
we can rely upon in seeking to cast into a few paragraphs 
such an abridgment of his ideas as may serve to make his 
position as an epoch man clear and indubitable, and by so 



Science and Religio7i not Enemies. 107 

doing, fortify our own estimate by the best witness in the 
case — himself. ' In doing so, we shall follow, as nearly as 
we can, the course of thought and the method of treatment 
pursued in the work. 

The Opus Majiis begins with a few remarks upon the 
need of advancement in knowledge, the right of human 
reason to exert a strict regulating power over all thoughts 
submitted to it for belief, or as motives to activity. Perfec- 
tion is rare ; to none has the capacity of knowing the true 
without admixture of error been given ; it is the extreme of 
folly, therefore, to believe on the witnessing of one only ; 
still more is it foolishness thrice-essenced to accept as veri- 
ties the judgments of the passionate, ignorant, and hasty 
mob. Com??wn?iess of acceptation is no infallible sign of 
any opinion's being true and right; neither is antiquity. 
Science is the pyramid the ages build. The early thinkers 
have given currency to grave errors, which it is the duty of 
their after-comers to revise and correct. No thought should 
be banished beyond the control of reason, or set itself apart 
as superior and unique. Though the fathers of the Church 
withdrew some subjects from investigation, they were in- 
competent, so far as jurisdiction went, to do any such thing 
rightly. They were men. Ill-will and false knowledge, as 
well as false reasoning, betrayed or deceived them. Science 
and religion are allies ; units of one whole — wisdom. Both 
should be studied ; one ought not to overmaster the other, 
neither ought one to succumb or enslave itself. Authority 
and reason are shown to coincide in the possibility of ortho- 
dox knowledge — the co-existence in one soul of " the true 
faith of a Christian" with the scientific acquirements of a sage. 

These theoretical views being propounded and enforced, 
the details next receive his attention. The grammatical 



108 Roger Bacon. 

and mathematical sciences, as they were then understood, 
being those in which the chief deficiencies of his age were 
manifested, receive his special attention. The sacred books 
being written in Hebrew and Greek, their expounders re- 
quire an extensive and accurate acquaintance with the 
genius, the vocables, and the phraseology of these lan- 
guages; Latin, being the official language of the Church, 
demands careful culture and sedulous regard. Scholastic 
philosophy — based, as it is, on the writings of Aristotle and 
the commentators of Arabia — can only nourish itself by 
feeding on the true and genuine fruits of the indigenous 
trees which they have respectively planted. He was him- 
self a good and skilful linguist, and his work here, often 
unwittingly, reveals the sad state of scholarship in the 
Church of the thirteenth century; as, for instance, where 
he, gravely, and in all seriousness, proposes that each bishop 
in consecrating a church should inscribe on its floor,' as a 
proof of his learning, the letters of the Greek alphabet, or at 
least, the three first letters, giving their value in notation at 
the same time. Bacon wrote a grammar of the Greek 
tongue, and his Latin style is easier, simpler, and more 
graphic than any other writer of his time. If we are not 
much mistaken, Roger Bacon is, more than any other 
author, the man to whom we can trace the enrichment of 
the Saxon language by the introduction of Latin vocables. 
In his works, at least, most of our Latinisms appear in the 
significations which they retain in mpdern English. This 
can be asserted, so far as we know, of no one more certainly 
than of the Oxonian friar ; and if our judgment is right, it 
would prove that a mighty agency had been set in operation 
by Bacon in his remote age, which permeates human 
thought even now, and influences the world in all its 



Analysts of the " Opus Majtts? 109 

tenderest interests. If to him we ascribe the initial influ- 
ence by which Latino-Saxon passed into English, we shall 
say little less than is his due — and yet how much is that ! 
About a twentieth of the Opus Majus consists of the gram- 
matical sections. In these grammatical books, too, ethics, 
logic, rhetoric, metaphysics, &c, receive notice, and some- 
times discussion. Besides this, however, they receive ad- 
mirable exemplification in his own writing. Of his style we 
have already spoken ; of his reasoning we may remark, that 
it is almost always strictly and fairly syllogistic in the best 
sense ; i.e., in its formal exactitude of dependence of conclu- 
sions on premises. Of his opinions on the Art of Reason- 
ing, the following is a fair specimen : — There are two modes 
of investigation ; viz., argument and experiment. Argu- 
ment closes and makes us close any doubtful matter, but 
does not assure — nor remove the doubt, so that the soul 
may rest in the beholding of the truth, unless it should get 
at that by the pathway of experience, since there are many 
who have arguments about knowable things, but because 
they have not experience, neglect those, and do not avoid 
the hurtful — nor follow after the beneficial. If, indeed, any 
man who had never seen fire has proven by sufficient argu- 
ments what things fire burns, injures, and destroys, never, 
on account of this, can the mind of the hearer rest, nor 
would he avoid the fire before that he had laid his hand or 
some combustible article on the fire, in order that by expe- 
rience he might prove what argument had taught ; but ex- 
perience being assumed, the mind is assured of the com- 
bustion, and rests in the shining of the truth which not 
argument satisfies, but experience. (Opus Majus, p. 446.) 
These well- expressed opinions prove him to have been no 
mere quibbler, but a genuine and honest thinker — a de- 



no Roger Bacon. 

spiser of mere authority, custom, prejudice, or art — a de- 
fender of the sovereignty of reason as the single judge of 
true and false, though not of right and wrong — a partisan of 
forethoughtful experience against the random mill-working 
of theoretic methods and artificial systems of logical thought. 
It is true that with all his might of mind, he did not remain 
exempt from errors in thought and practice. Who else 
has % Without these clearly-entertained notions on reason- 
ing, could he have been the father of experimentalism — as 
he was i 

So far, then, we see that in his writings Bacon approves 
himself to be one — 

" Not the utter fool of show — 
Not absolutely form'd to be the dupe 
Of shallow plausibilities alone," — 

but wise and bold enough to take the foreseen perilous path 
of giving himself up to painful study and the patient search 
for lore— hidden in nature, though unfound in books. 

In his remarks on mathematics, however, Bacon is greater 
and grander, more persistently original and brave, than any- 
where. This was the department in which there was the 
greatest danger, and this is the subject on which he displays 
the utmost daring. Here he gives full vent to his love of 
realism, and exhibits the fullest independence of thought. 
The utility and grandeur of mathematical science are proven 
by the fact that it is the postulate and prime principle of 
almost every department of knowledge, without the accept- 
ance of which fruitful study is impossible ; that it renders 
the solution of many questions in natural philosophy easy ; 
and that it is highly advantageous to the theologian when 
he wishes to employ the principles of chronology in the 
explanation of Holy Writ. Some of the queries which ma- 



Reasoning and Experiment. 1 1 1 

theraatics is said by Bacon to be useful in solving may here 
be mentioned, as indicating the grasp of thought he took, 
and the width of vision he displayed; e.g., Is matter infinite] 
Do bodies touch each other at one or many points ] What 
is the form of the earth? Are there one earth, sun, and 
moon, or many 1 What is the cause of heat 1 &c. Mathe- 
matical science is the basis of astrology, medicine, geogra- 
phy, optics, &c. A treatise on perspective and on the mul- 
tiplication of figures or appearances gives indication of his 
acquaintance with spectacles, the principles of the micro- 
scope and the telescope, &c. In other portions of his work 
we find specific illustrations of the vast range of his investi- 
gations, the indefatigable persistency of his mind, and his 
far-stretching knowledge of the science, art, and literature 
of his era ; but in the closing book of his Opus Majus he 
rises to the dignity of a true philosopher, and discourses with 
fluent ease and accurate logic upon the conditions of 
sciences, the principles of scientific investigation, and of the 
correlation of reasoning and experiment. The domain of 
theoretic thought and practical induction he clearly bounded 
off from each other. He added example to precept, and 
exercised, in presence of his contemporaries, the methods 
he propounded. He discerned with true philosophic pre- 
science the dim splendour of a future for which humanity 
was scarcely prepared, and with unswerving and unfaltering 
step walked on himself, and called upon his fellows to follow 
the method which lay before him in the unchronicled history 
of human aspiration, as full of success, glory, and good. In 
an age of mental torpor, he, in the might and energy of will, 
struggled to escape the endless multiplicity of mazes into 
which scholasticism had enticed all human inquiry, and 
attempted to look beyond the prescribed circles of thought 



1 1 2 Roger Bacon. 

in which the soul was imprisoned. In the midst of men 
unlearned and heedless of learning, he burned as a lamp, 
lustrous in a fog, and cast upon the dark surroundings of 
his age a light unpleasing, because revealing the oilless 
vessels of the foolish, who bore no light, and exclaimed 
that light was needless, if not absolutely injurious. Custom, 
authority, prejudice, and envy rained their heaviest upon 
his head, and persecution shot her venomed fang into his 
soul. Yet did he stand dauntless and unfearing in the 
grasp of captivity, before the judgment-seat of the earthly 
vicegerent of Omnipotence, and plead his cause and that 
of science and truth in opposition to the cavils of slander 
and the haughty virulence of bigotry. For a time the 
upstored thunderbolts of prejudice were unlaunched, but 
they were only all the more effectively arranged in the quiver 
of the Franciscan monks, for being used when the hour and 
the opportunity came, in which vindictive craft and cunning 
meanness might again freely wield the instruments for 
defending "things as they are." What better, 

" After tempestuous hours, than deep repose?'' 
What more certain to succeed a calm than storm and danger ] 
So it was with Bacon. Gregory X. had too much in hand 
in the correction of discipline, the patching up of an alliance 
with the Greek Church, the convoking and management of 
the Council of Lyons, the attempt to stir up a new crusade, 
and in the settlement of the mode of electing popes, to 
be, in his brief rule, able to note and control the innovations 
of the scientific Franciscan. Pope Innocent V. had scarcely 
time to feel the tiara on his brow ; still less had Adrian V. ; 
and John, his successor, was little favoured by fate or for- 
tune either. One year saw all these men chosen, crowned, 
and dead, as if some strange disease had lurked within the 



His Trial and Condemnation. 1 1 3 

emblematic circlet that placed all things — save death — under 
the government of the inheritors of Peter. These successive 
brief glimpses of authority — scarcely exerted before laid 
down — weakened the papacy, and enabled the generals of 
the several orders to wax strong. Hence, in 1278, Jerome 
of Ascoli in the Marches, a bigoted and austere theologian, 
being vicar-general of the Franciscans, and papal legate to 
the court of France, the members of the order deemed it 
a well-fitting time " to whip the offending Adam out" of 
their misguided brother. Informations having been duly 
lodged, a council of the brethren of St Francis was called at 
Paris. To this council Bacon was cited. He appeared. 
There seem to have been two accusations ; or rather, an 
alternative indictment appears to have been prepared — 1st, 
Innovation in thought, form, doctrine, and spirit ; 2d, The 
theoretical maintenance of astrological opinions and the 
practice of magic and incantations. Jerome sat at the head 
of the council board. Bacon, now sixty-four years old, bent 
with much study, yet resolute and untired in spirit, pleaded 
at the lower end. Those writings which he had issued in 
despite of the vow of obedience to his official superiors in 
the order — though at the request of a Pope — were con- 
demned ; he was declared to be not only heterodox, but 
contumacious, and was sentenced to close incarceration. 
A confirmation of the proceedings of the council of Paris 
was speedily gained — for now the order could overawe its 
lord — from Pope Martin III., and Bacon's doom was sealed. 
That the real object of the trial was to restrain and silence 
Bacon, not to give fair and free judgment upon the evidence 
adduced, we infer from the significant fact that the whole ad- 
judication was completed without the then usual opportunity 
of retractation and repentance being given to the accused, a 

H 



H4 Roger Bacon. 

proceeding never omitted by the clement Church, unless 
when acting on a foregone conclusion for the attainment 
of a predetermined end, which an offer of pardon on such 
conditions might disappoint or render futile. It had been 
decided upon that Bacon's free speech, free thought, and 
advocacy of the rights of reason and the legitimacy of ex- 
periment as a proof of truth or falsehood, made him dan- 
gerous ; and with a show, without the reality of a trial, they 
endeavoured, by the old and time-honoured expedient of 
imprisonment, to convince him of the policy of conformity. 
Bacon believed that he had been unjustly used ; he ex- 
hausted every possible means of gaining his freedom ; but 
the jealousy and galled pride of his order were too active 
and powerful ; all his efforts were unavailing. Nicholas III. 
required, as Dante makes him confess, " to enrich his 
whelps/' to simonise and nepotise, and must not interfere 
with the enjoyments and wishes of those who wrapped him 
with " the mighty mantle/' or waste his labour upon nicely- 
balanced questions about the good of the Church and the " 
personal inconvenience to another, occasioned by imprison- 
ment for the good cause of its internal peace, security, and 
permanence. Martin IV. was too far sunk in the sensual 
gratifications of gluttony, too much occupied by the Sicilian 
vespers and their results, too hotly interested in hunting 
from his throne Michael of Byzantium, to disquiet his sou] 
about the discomforts of prison diet, discipline, and restrio 
tions on free thought, or to interest himself in the distribu- 
tion or exaction of just and honest dealing between the 
members of an order bound by laws of their own choosing, 
and approved of by former popes. Honorius IV. had the 
nepotising vices of Nicholas III., and the excitement of an 
attempt to get up a crusade against the Arragonese in Sicily, 



Papal Hate and Noble Generosity. 1 1 5 

as occupation during his three years' reign. On his death, 
the intrigues of Bacon's judge, Jerome of Ascoli, resulted in 
his being invested with the purple. Looking upon self-de- 
fence as honest and right, Bacon, who, in his attempts to 
be heard amid the din of the sensuality, avarice, contention, 
and hierarchical pride of former popes, found no ear inclined 
to listen, did not fail in energy or hope, even in these his 
latter hours, when seventy-four years had waved their change- 
ful magic over his life, but appealed to Jerome, his former 
judge, for remission of the unjust sentence he had passed 
on him while Franciscan general at Paris. He, now Ni- 
cholas IV., felt not the beatings of a generous heart agitate 
his bosom. On the contrary, his former hate was increased 
at the haughty insolence which could demand as a right 
that he, the Pope, should convict himself of partiality or in- 
capacity, and claim as due from him what he had sued for 
from his predecessors. He added to the severities of his 
fate, increased the rigours of his confinement, and caused 
his bonds to be more scrupulously tightened round him. 
The spite of the monk overcame the clement spirit which 
should reign in the soul of the chief magistrate of God's 
earthly Church. 

Private solicitation and interest at length effected what 
the papal sense of justice could not yield to bestow. Some 
of the noblest peers of England, in this act truly noble, com- 
bined to beg for Bacon what he could not stoop to suppli- 
cate for on his own account. Politic adulation of the men 
in power and station led to a remission of the punishment 
of Bacon; he was released from his Parisian conventual 
prison-house, and permitted to return to Oxford, and, amid 
his old associates and associations, in the scene of his for- 
mer labours, lecturings, and sufferings, to drag on an old 



1 1 6 Roger Bacon, 

age which anxiety, confinement, disappointment, and the 
superhuman industry which work, theorised and experi- 
mented on even in the grasp of persecution, had rendered 
no smooth-laid passage to the inevitable resting-place of 
man. He had written for Pope Nicholas IV. a book upon 
the means of retarding the infirmities of old age, in the 
belief that such a proof of his sanity and the efficacy of his 
discoveries might w r ork in his favour, and wan him a little ot 
that gratitude which might be felt by one on whom a much- 
desired benefit had been conferred. The Pope died in April 
1292, and Bacon survived him nearly two years. The na- 
tural strength of his mind seems to have been little abated, 
for during the latter years of his residence at Oxford he 
wrote a compendium of theology, an indirect protest against 
the alleged heterodoxy of his opinions, doings, and dis- 
coveries. On his death, w r hich took place in 1294, the 
monks of his fraternity, fearing some magic-working revenge 
for their brotherly attentions to his spiritual state and con- 
cerns, placed his waitings, &c, under lock and key, that no 
opportunity might be given for any exertion of their powers 
of injury. For many years they lay undisturbed, save by 
the insects, who found them pleasant food ; and the parch- 
ments on which the grand revelations of a God-sent mind 
were written suffered as much injury from their close con- 
finement as did the writer from his personal trials. 

That Bacon's fame w r as not evanescent, we have good 
proof in the numerous MS. copies of his works, or parts of 
them, which occupy places in the various university and 
national libraries at home and abroad, and from the careful 
way in which his correspondence with Pope Clement, and 
the holy Father's replies, are preserved in the Vatican lib- 
rary. The monks, to conceal the true nature and char- 



Legends regarding Him. 1 1 7 

acter of his opinions, circulated numerous strange and mar- 
vellous tales among the people, which became embodied in 
legends, and gave him a notoriety among the commonalty 
resembling that of Michael Scott in Caledonia, Faust in 
Germany, and Albertus Magnus in France. Yet there was 
always a feeling " akin to love" prevalent in the popular 
mind, and hence when, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
" The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon" was written, we 
find that, unlike other magicians, he is not represented as in 
league with, but as a constant foil to, the works of the prince 
of the powers of darkness, and at the close is allowed to 
repent, become an anchorite and a true divine j and in 
Greene's highly popular play of " Friar Bacon and Friar 
Bungay" he is represented as saying, — 

"It repents me sore 
That Bacon ever meddled with this art. 
# # •& * 

Sins have their salves ; repentance can do much. 

Think ! Mercy sits where Justice holds her seat, 

And from those wounds the bloody Jews did pierce, 

Which by thy magic oft did bleed afresh, — 

From thence, for thee, the dew of mercy drops, 

To wash the wrath of high Jehovah's ire, 

And make thee free as new-born babe from sin. 

Bungay, I '11 spend the remnant of my life 

In pure devotion, praying to my God 

That he would save what Bacon vainly lost." 

These things show that the kindly feeling of English hearts 
could not be turned even by the " sweet deceiving tongues" 
of "the monks of old" from doing such justice as they 
could to the memory of the deserving; and prove how in- 
capable even ill-natured, though " pious frauds," are to serve 
the ends of their originators when opposed to plain, sturdy 
honesty of thought and the instinct of true hearts, even 



1 1 8 Roger Bacon. 

when they are rude and unlettered, not much given to the 
sifting of evidence, or the logical determination of true and 
false. 

One or two observations regarding matters which did not 
seem capable of being wrought into our narrative without 
making it too digressional may now be offered to the reader, 
viz. — 

Bacon is the reputed discoverer of gunpowder, and in- 
ventor of the telescope, spectacles, &c. That he discovered 
a sort of detonating mixture resembling, if not really, gun- 
powder, is certain ; for he describes not only its effects but 
its ingredients, though, after the manner of his time, he 
conceals the special point of his own discovery in an ana- 
gram which, strange to say, baffled ingenuity for some 
centuries. "This substance is composed/' says he, "of 
lurv mope can ubre — i.e., fiulvere carbo?ium, or powder of 
charcoal, of saltpetre, and of sulphur." It is one of those 
strange things which he mentions that " strike terror on the 
sight, so that the flashings of the clouds are beyond com- 
parison less disturbing/' which gives us an "imitation of 
thunder and lightning," and constitutes "a fire which will 
burn to any distance." That he had thought out the whole 
theory of a telescope is also quite true, though whether he 
constructed one maybe doubted; unless we accept as evi- 
dence the tradition of his "glass prospective," "wherein he 
could see anything that was done within fifty miles about 
him," coupled with his assertion that " we can so shape 
transparent substances, .... that objects may be seen far 
off or near, and thus, from an incredible distance, we may 
read the smallest letters, and number the grains of dust and 
sand." Leonard Digges, writing of his father in 1590, says, 
" He was able by perspective glasses .... to discover 



Discoveries, Inventions, and Character. 1 19 

every particularatie of the country round about, wheresoever 
the sunne's beames might pearse, .... which partly grew 
by the aid he had of one old-written book of the same 
Bacon's experiments" Though Bossuet says the invention 
of spectacles belongs to the close of the thirteenth century, 
and that we are indebted for them to a Jacobin friar, and 
Smith in his " Optics" asserts that incontestable proofs 
exist that the first glasses of this kind were constructed by 
Alexander de Spina, a Jacobin friar, who died at Pisa in 
13 13, we know that Bacon, in his Opus Ma/us, 1267, 
describes and explains them, remarking, as if they were 
already in use, " hence this instrument is useful to old per- 
sons and those who have weak eyes." 

With geography and chronology Bacon was so conversant 
that he gives a lengthy and learned account of the inhabited 
world, the chief portions of which are drawn from the writ- 
ings of preceding and contemporary travellers, including 
Marco Polo; and he suggested to Clement, his patron, that 
very reform in the Calendar which Pope Gregory XIII., 
300 years afterwards, did himself honour by adopting. 

Bacon's acquaintance with optics enabled him to explain, 
in some degree approximating to the canons of modern 
science, the phenomena of the rainbow, while his mechani- 
cal knowledge was such, that Dr Freind calls him "the 
miracle of his age, and possessed, perhaps, of the greatest 
genius for mechanical science that has been known since 
the days of Archimedes." 

All these facts prove that Bacon was a man freed from 
the enthralling despotism of traditionalism in thinking, one 
who, though he stood in the shadow of superstitious reves 
ence for, and submissiveness to, authority, yet looked be- 
yond the shadow, and caught glimpses, at least, of truths 



1 20 Roger Bacon. 

and facts which lay beyond the borderland of then per- 
mitted thought or speech : a man who would not, like a 
bruised snail, shrink himself to endure and suffer, and 
remain a memorial of the blasting weight of the oppressor's 
foot, or lower his life's aims and efforts by prescription ; or 
for the pleasure of being patted, like a pet of the kennel, 
now and then, fawn, and cringe, and crouch, and flatter, 
only to gain a more distinct application of the whip when 
he should fail in any point implied in the monkish lesson of 
subserviency. He had a praiseworthy stubborn uprightness, 
a rightful confidence in his own powers of thought and 
action, a knowing acquaintance with the fallacies of the 
soul as well as the sophistries of his sect, and a firm-set faith 
in the truth of God, when read aright either in word or 
work. How sad to think that such a one as he should feel 
necessitated to complain that he was held back from pur- 
suing his researches into nature by u the rumours of the 
vulgar !" How refreshing it is to find him, even when beset 
by his enemies, asserting, regarding one of his new discover- 
ies, that it is " of more satisfaction to a discreet mind than 
a king's crown." There is a depth of feeling in the phrase 
as uttered by him, which gives it emphasis. These are the 
words of a simple, single-minded, benevolent, philosophi- 
cally-inclined man, whose heart was grieved that aught else 
should be preferred to " divine philosophy." Like an early 
ripe fruit in a surly spring, he was used frostily, and the 
flavour of his life was somewhat lost; enough, however, 
remains to make us feel that he was one of Time's favourite 
children — a foreshadower of the future. He did not give 
actual being to experimental philosophy, but he did, more 
than any other man of his own or any other single age, 
compared with his surroundings, to establish the principle 



Experimental Science. 1 2 1 

that experiment is the test of theory, and the touchstone of 
thought, the handmaiden of truth, and the chief foe to self- 
deception in investigation. He is the earliest consistent 
theoretical and practical inquirer into the realities of natural 
phenomena; the noblest advocate in his own age of the 
right of private judgment on matters of science, of the need 
of reform in study, teaching, and thinking. The sorrows he 
bore for his beloved's sake — Truth — endear him to our 
heart, and warm up our sympathies to the highest. We 
know not if we have so thought and expressed ourselves as 
to make this plain to others, as it seems to be to us. We 
sincerely hope that this, at least, has been made palpable — 
that even amid the greatest difficulties of the saddest times 
in the world's history, the truly gifted man can work the 
work given him to do, and leave his memory green in the 
hearts of the people, in spite of ignorance, misunderstand- 
ing, misrepresentation, and malice, and that truth is stronger 
than persecution, neglect, contumely, and death. 

The remarkable monk of whose life we have presented a 
summary so brief, did not fail in the great work to which he 
devoted himself through any deficiency of will or worth. 
The times were not ripe for the great step forward he pro- 
posed Life was too unsettled ; thought was too torpid ; 
the ignorance, even of thinking men, was too profound ; 
reason too submissive, and custom too strong. In his great 
mind the germ was planted which another Bacon cultured 
till it bore fruit — fruit for the blessing of all nations. To 
pursue the path of true philosophy in an age of ignorance 
and error ; to incur, endure, and brave the displeasures of 
his co-friars and the Church; to persevere in the specula- 
tions, experiments, and endeavours which occupied his soul 
in opposition to Custom, Authority, Prejudice, and Perse- 



122 Roger Bacon. 

cution, indicate a nobleness superior to that of his illustrious 
namesake and successor, even though we free his memory 
from many of the reproaches that have been cast upon it. 
That in an age when any attempt to promote the ex- 
pansion of the human intellect alarmed the Church with 
thoughts of heresy, Bacon maintained the right of man to 
free thought in science, forms a claim to the respect of all 
ages which is undeniable : for as the late Professor John 
Playfair said, " It is but fair to consider persecution, in- 
flicted by the ignorant and bigoted, as equivalent to praise 
bestowed by the liberal and enlightened." 




Dante — Nationality. 

A,D. I265-132I, 



M Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, 
With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes, 
Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, 
Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. 
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom ; 
Yet in thy heart what human sympathies, 
What soft compassion glows, as in the skies 
The tender stars their clouded lamps relume ! 
Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks, 
By Fra Hilario in his diocese, 
As up the convent walls, in golden streaks, 
The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease; 
And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks, 
Thy voice along the cloister whispers, * Peace ! ' " 

— Longfellow, 



" Dante's great poem is at once a tomb and a cradle : the splendid 
tomb of a world passing away — the cradle of a dawning brighter world, 
to come." — Abb'e Lamejinais. 



" Both as a man and a poet, Dante stands first of that race of mighty 
subjectives who may be said, in token of their conquests, to stamp the 
impress of their own individuality both upon the actual world and upon 
that which they create; that is to say, they derive all from within them- 
selves or from the future, of which they are the prophets." — Guiseppe 
Mazzini. 



" Weep not for the dead, but weep ye sore for him who goeth forth 
from his place, and returns no more." — Jeremiah. 



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DANTE— NATIONALITY. 



IME is not a unity only, but a continuity. No part 
of it can be cut off or sectionalised — it is a whole. 
The Past interpenetrates and pervades the Pres- 
ent, which again contains the secret of the Future. A link 
of mutual responsibility joins in one the whole human race ; 
a perfect chain of causation unites all change. History is 
not only a tell-tale, but a prophet ; it has a two-fold life — ■ 
in memory and in hope. The past is not dead — it is im- 
mortal. History contains the elements of evolution as well 
as of revolution. The pith and marrow of its interest lies 
in its record of the tireless labour of those from whom the 
Present takes its form. Great men are the essences of their 
epochs — men who give as well as receive impulses — men 
who are not responsive only to the influences which sur- 
round them, but who, by touching the mainsprings of events, 
work their being into other ages. They are not mysterious, 
incomprehensible exotics among men ; they are at once the 
incarnated results of all that has preceded them, and the 
centres of newer manifestations. Strange, wayward, fateful, 
many-coloured, and motley as their several lives may seem, 
there is that within them which effloresces through the cen- 
turies, and seeks unrestingly for some development — a 



126 Dante. 



super-vitality, if we may so speak, which, defying even 
death, oozes forth, with subtle vigour, to diffuse in aftei 
ages life, improvement, and hope. Such a man was Dante, 
the mighty Florentine, Italy's master-mind, the first-born 
singer of the modern world. The chief thought which fer- 
mented in his mind is one which even now leavens almost 
the whole of Italian thought. Amid all the miseries, strug- 
gles, martyrdoms, and dismemberments of his native land, 
the sublime aspirations of "the banished Ghibelline" with 
glorious incorruptibility have floated, ever-living seeds, in the 
atmosphere of Italian thought, descending ever and anon 
into some quickening soul, which takes the seed but to give 
back the plant, and have at length ripened into the magni- 
ficent idea of " nationality" — the nationality of that land to 
which even yet Europe denies a name, an organisation, and 
a life. The time shall yet come when " the prophecy of 
Dante" will be fulfilled; and his idea of the unity of Italy 
shall be evolved into a fact. When the moral character ot 
her people has been improved, her misfortunes and degrada- 
tions — needful and purifying educational processes — shall 
cease, and in la Bella Italia, the destiny of which her noblest 
poet dreamed, shall dawn and redden, until day-bright in its 
glory. To the life of this epoch man, in so many ways a 
type of his country's fate, let us devote a portion of such 
thought and sympathy as is his due. Not that the true life 
of such a one lies hid in the mere facts of time and space 
which we can colligate about him, but because of the hu- 
man interest we take in knowing the environments of such 
a man, and estimating their effects upon the inner thoughts 
which constitute and are his veritable life. 

It is not, indeed, our purpose, in these concise sketches, 
to present elaborate and "long-drawn-out" details regarding 



. 



Birth, Boyhood, and Education. 127 

the minutice of history. We strive to gaze rather upon 
the thought which, like the centre-light in a room, imparts 
its radiance to the whole. This thought must indeed be 
localised and circumstanced, for all life is conditioned ; but 
to us thought seems matter of greater moment than its con- 
ditions. Therefore, in so far only as the outward forms of 
being affect the immortal love, the strenuous indignation, 
the lofty patriotism, the misery-shadowed poetry, the severe 
destiny, and the sublime hopes, which Dante represents to 
us, shall we gather up historic facts, and, like the drapery 
of a statue, wrap them round him. 

Durante or Dante Alighieri, the son of Aldighiero 
Alighieri, was born at Florence, May, a.d. 1265. His 
family was noble. His great-grandfather, Cacciaguida 
Elisei, a Florentine knight, who had married a Ferrarese 
lady named Alighieri, followed Conrad III., King of Italy 
and Emperor of Germany, in the second crusade, was 
knighted in the Holy Land, and died in battle in Syria, 
1 147.* Dante's father died while he was yet a child, and 
of his mother we know nothing, except that she took the 
greatest care of and in his upbringing and his education. 
By her he was placed under the tutelage of Brunetto Latini, 
by whom he was initiated into all the branches of classical 
learning, politics, and philosophy. It has been asserted 
that he perfected his studies at the universities, of which 
Padua, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford have been specially 
mentioned ; but of this we are not aware that there is any 
positive evidence. It is certain, however, that he was widely 
read and deeply learned, and that he was an adept in music, 
horsemanship, falconry, and drawing, besides being — a rare 
accomplishment in those days — remarkable for the delicacy 
* See "II Paradiso," c. 15-17. 



128 Dante. 






and beauty of his penmanship. He was therefore fitted on 
all points — birth, education, accomplishments, and habits — 
to take his place among either the men of the world, the 
scholars, or the soldiers of his time ; and Beatrice speaks 
truth of him when, in the " II Purgatorio," she says — 

1 8 This man was such, that he 
Might in himself have wondrously displayed 
All noble virtues in supreme degree." — C. 30. 

It is quite evident that in his youth he moved in genteel 
circles, and was respected as a man of birth, honour, and 
accomplishments. He was the companion of Guido Caval- 
canti, a learned, inquisitive, and thinking youth, somewhat 
skilled in verse-making ; his family was on terms of neigh- 
bourly intimacy with that of Folco Portinari ; we have a 
right to presume, from his sonnets, that he was the friend 
of Cino da Pistoia, the most famous doctor and teacher ot 
civil law in his day, and a much-esteemed poet ; as well as 
an acquaintance, at least, of his " ladie love," Ricciarda del 
Selvaggi ; and he was admitted to the parties given by the 
noblest families in Florence. From these premises we infer 
that there was no barrier in the state, condition, prospect, 
appearance, or character of Dante, to prevent his aspiring 
to the blessedness of marriage with any lady in Florence. 

It was at a festival in " the merry month of May," that 
month which is " the mother of love," that Dante, in his 
ninth year, 

" Ere boyhood yet had wholly pass'd away," 

first observantly made the acquaintance of Beatrice Portinari. 
On his active boyish mind she made a wondrous impres- 
sion; but it is ante-dating passion altogether to call this 
outburst of admiration for the beautiful, this instinctive ap- 
perception of the poet's creed — "all that is good is beauti- 



Early Life and Love. 129 

ful and fair," — by the name of Love. Let us rather say 
that this admiration, growing in intenseness as the lady 
blossomed into womanhood and showed 

" A perfect body and a mind as fair,"* 

transformed itself, about his eighteenth year, into that 
strangest and strongest passion of man's nature, which gave 
birth to the first sonnet of the "Vita Nuova." She appears 
to have received his advances with maidenly reserve and 
tender delicacy ; but this to an ardent, haughty, and some- 
what melancholy mind, like his, whose whole being seemed 
to concentre in this passion, so thoroughly did it entrance 
him, could not but look like coldness, and be the cause of 
"bitter sweet" complaints. The extreme sensitiveness of 
his nature made him quiver at the slightest tinge of change 
in her. There can be little doubt but that Beatrice saw in 
his full black eyes the evidences of such intense feeling as 
no other Florentine could show ; but whether he ever ven- 
tured to address her in such terms as could justify her in 
considering herself pledged, is doubtful. He himself has 
not withdrawn the veil of curious mystery that hangs around 
his early and long-during love. That she married another 
than he, we know. That she jilted him, we cannot believe. 
On no possible hypothesis involving her unfaithfulness can 
we account for the haughty Dante's retaining his full, free, 
glowing fervour to the last. Morbid and imbecile senti- 
mentality did not lie in Dante's line ; and had she been 
willingly false, nothing could have rescued his after conduct 
from contempt. Why should the " worst construction " be 
placed on all the obscure portions of a human life 1 Afuslwe 
convict Beatrice of disreputable coquettishness, Dante of mop- 
ing and stupid romanticism, or Folco Portinari of miserliness, 
* See Canzone xxiv. for a full description of Beatrice. 



130 Dante. 

meanness, and domestic tyranny, to knit into historic unity 
known facts % We think not. This rather let us suppose, 
that, though burning with a fervent fever of soul, Dante, 
with tremulous doubt of his own worthiness to claim the 
fearful happiness of calling her his own, pent up within the 
throbbing prison of his heart that anxious question which 
might have secured for him the utterances of hope, for us 
some happier history, perhaps, but not that poem at which 
the world yet marvels. At last her father sickens, and with 
a parent's natural zeal presses upon Beatrice — that he may 
die happy in knowing that in the day of Italy's troubles she 
will enjoy a husband's protection — the suit of Simon del 
Bardi, a gentleman of fortune and position, who had sought 
her hand. With true self-sacrificing, daughterly love, she 
may have consented, and casting from her grief-fraught soul 
the memory of Dante in this crisis of her fate, may have 
uttered an unrecallable promise by the bed of death on 
which, in 1289, her father, Folco Portinari, lay. Among 
those who paid the visits of condolence, customary on such 
a bereaval, there was one who showed, by downcast eyes, 
an inward grief, as he heard her speak amidst her tears, and 
saw the cureless woe which her pale countenance expressed; 
his sincere avowal of an exquisite sorrow for her loss may 
have wrenched from her the thrice woeful secret, and then he 
may have felt — 

"The whole of love at once, and utter'd it, 
Then bade ' adieu ' for ever." 

This, at any rate, we do know, that in that same year we 
find him marching, with his fellow-citizens, in arms against 
the inhabitants of Arezzo, a town thirty-four miles south- 
east of Florence, from which the Ghibellines had expelled 
the Guelphs ; and in the battle of Campandilo there fought, 



Inspiration and A spiration . 131 

we have the testimony of Leonardo Aretino that he was a 
leader. At the close of the same year, too, Beatrice was 
married ; but some secret unascertained yet soul-corroding 
grief must surely have found a lodgment in the recently 
vivacious heart of her on whom Dante had showered his 
young life's love ; for in a few months after, June 9, 
1290, "the messengers of peace" came and carried her 
" beyond the gates of life." At the request of her brother, 
Dante wrote a lament for her. This, however it might 
gratify her brother, could not solace his sorrow ; he became 
as Boccaccio says, " a savage thing to the eye ; " he was, 
by his own confession, "grief-stung to madness." The 
anniversary of that sad day which had made his life " soli- 
tary " with the solitariness of bereavement he kept as a day 
of sacred reflection, and on one of these days, 

" Calender 'd only in his aching heart," 

the resolve to celebrate his Beatrice as no woman had ever 
yet been, seized on his thoughts, and the seed which 
ripened into the " Divina Commedia " was sown. In him 
the true mission of woman and of love was fulfilled; it 
purified, ennobled, and sanctified his life ; it shed unwonted 
energy into his aspiring soul; it transformed desire into 
worship ; and when Death came, he glorified the real into 
the ideal, and as it were infused a double being into 
Dante. Hereafter there was given to him a grander sense 
of duty; a holier significance was imparted to life, and a 
nobler and more exalted fervour animated every act and 
thought. These heaven-sent agonies were not without 
their use in enabling him more worthily to wage the peren- 
nial fight between the soul and sense to which mankind is, 
in this earth-existence, called. Let us lower the earth 



132 Dante. 

gently upon her, and say, Requiescat ! as we depart- from her 
tomb to rejoin the work- world once more. 

In the year 1290, so woe-black to Dante, he again sought 
in the hot activities of war a refuge from corrosive sorrow ; 
he joined the Florentines in their attack upon Pisa, where 
he gathered that incident of the hunger-death of Count 
Ugolino and his sons, which is so appallingly described in 
" The Inferno," and has been so grimly, yet grandly de- 
picted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. At this time the towers of 
the Porte Pisano were destroyed, and the Castle of Caprona 
was taken. Returned from this useless attempt by physical 
exertion "to pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow," 
Dante threw himself into the excitement of political life, 
and, though a Ghibelline himself, wedded, 1291, a lady of 
the opposite faction, Gemma Donati; perhaps this was, 
as Leigh Hunt pleasingly suggests, the lady to whom, in 
thankfulness for her pity, he addressed sonnets 18 — 21 of 
the "Vita Nuova." We all know that "pity is akin to 
love," and the truthfulness to nature of Othello's " round, 
unvarnished tale " — 

' * She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, 
And I loved her that she did pity them" — 

has never been gainsaid. And -why may not the elder bard 

have been a case in point of what the younger says'? Be 

this as it may, we know that, regarding some "pitying 

spirit," there did arise in Dante's mind a contest between 

inclination and reason ; that he did marry, and that he had 

a numerous family, five sons and a daughter ; that he was, 

with perhaps, two slight and brief derelictions, faithful to 

his marital duties; that he loved his children; and that, 

with becoming delicacy, he has in the "Divina Commedia" 

described only the purely pyschological development of his 



Sensationalism Rebuked. 133 

early love, and has abstained from mentioning, what, indeed, 
would have destroyed the artistic unity of the whole, either 
his or Beatrice's marriage. We are prone to accept that 
interpretation, as justifiable as any other, which accords 
with a noble though troubled life, even although it discoun- 
tenance the prurient fancies of those who support the thesis 
that the wedded life of genius is and must be always unhappy. 
Of two suppositions, equally probable in themselves, we 
incline to that which most honours the wife, and least dis- 
honours the husband; which makes love possible, but duty 
true and real. It is a sad evidence of the depravity of the 
heart, how much more ready we are to deem that " roman- 
tic" which gleams in the lurid brilliancy of vice, than shines 
with the sober lustre of virtue. We believe that Dante loved 
— not indeed with the impulsive earnestness of his earlier 
passion, but calmly, coldly, and honestly — the Lady Gemma, 
and that she was the "new and gentle spirit of love" to 
whom he pays court thus : — 

" Lady, the gentle thought which speaks of you 
Comes frequently to bear me company, 
And then so sweetly reasons upon love, 
It makes the heart consent to all it says."* 

We have mentioned in our preceding paragraphs, the 
names of two parties which, in Dante's age, divided Italy, 
and we shall now make our transition from his private to 
his public life, by proceeding to explain the nature of the 
differences which then so often divided a house against 
itself. In 1 2 15, a young man of the family of Buondel- 
monte, though betrothed to an Uberti, married a Donati. 
The faithless lover was stabbed in the street by the relatives 
of the lady. The frantic mode of seeking justice by appeals 
* " Vita Nuova," sonnet xxL 



1 34 Dante. 

to arms was then in vogue, and the citizens took part in the 
quarrel. The Uberti were adherents of the party who 
favoured the temporal sovereignty of the emperors of Ger- 
many, rather than that of the Popes. The secularists were 
called Ghibellines ; the ecclesiasts, Guelphs. The private 
feud just mentioned merging itself into the elder and wider 
quarrel awoke these parties to active hostilities, and a series 
of distressing civil contests, in which " twenty republics 
made savage war upon each other within the bosom of the 
Peninsula/' continued to bear witness to the intensity of 
the hatred and jealousy of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, of 
which Florence became, in consequence, the head-quarters. 
In this strife of the factions we have seen that Dante engaged. 
Not, however, as a partisan, as this marriage of his and 
many of his subsequent acts prove, did he adopt the insig- 
nia and the shibboleths of Ghibellinism. His genius was too 
lofty to warp itself up in the littleness of sectional thought, 
and he pursued his honest convictions wherever they led — 
no matter to which party, for the time being, they attached 
him. He acted upon the idea expressed in those words, so 
often desecrated, — " measures, not men," — and rose superior 
to the fractional egotisms of time-serving partisanship. It 
could not but be gratifying to him, therefore, to find that 
under the leadership of Giano della Bella some enactment 
likely to restrain the violence of faction was about to be 
introduced, and he must have been delighted at the appoint- 
ment, in 1293, of a new officer, called il gonfaloniere di gins- 
tizia, the standard-bearer of justice. No office was more need- 
ful. Hitherto the citizens of Florence had been divided into 
three classes — 1, Grcuidi — feudal nobles; 2, Pofiolani Grassi 
— wealthy citizens ; 3, Piccioli — "the lower orders." The two 
latter classes found that in the contests of the factions they 



A Friend in Need. 135 

chiefly suffered, and hence they claimed a new " constitu- 
tion." This was gained, in 1282, by a law which classed 
the citizens according to their occupations. The members 
of the higher occupations elected six priori, or councillors, 
who were renewable every two months. They were the 
executive of the republic. No one could hold this honour 
unless he was an enrolled member of one of the " arti mag- 
giori," or " higher trades ;" and Dante, when he decided on 
pursuing politics, inscribed his name on the register of the 
apothecaries. Even this safeguard failed in keeping peace 
in Florence, and hence the new reform movement consum- 
mated in 1293. Soon after the appointment of the adminis- 
trator of justice, an unprincipled coalition of the nobles 
expelled the reforming party, and secured to themselves the 
right to destroy their neighbours' quiet and prosperity. The 
Donati and the Cherchi took different parts in this issue of 
events, and frequent affrays between their partisans disturbed 
the streets. The Pope, of course, favoured the Donati. 
About the same time, a family enmity arose in Pistoia 
between two branches of the Cancellieri, called respectively 
Bianchi and Neri. Florence was asked to arbitrate. It 
ruled that the chiefs of the faction should be expelled from 
Pistoia. This opinion being adopted, the exiles came to 
Florence. There they naturally allied themselves to those 
who most befriended them. The Neri attached themselves 
to the Donati, the Bianchi to the Cherchi, and thus it hap- 
pened that the factions of Florence received their desig- 
nations from the Pistoians whom they patronised. The 
state was embarrassed by this complication of quarrel within 
quarrel, and some man, whose sterling qualities were indis- 
putable by either party, was wanted to calm the storm of 
anarchy, and be a pilot in the hour of need. Dante was 



136 Dante. 

chosen. Like a strong-souled, honest man, he set himself 
to do the duty of the hour. This he did, not by the flicker- 
ing and unsteady lamp of the expedient, but by the ever- 
beaming light of justice. He could not stoop to be the tool 
of party ; he saw the merits and demerits of faction, and 
decided accordingly. Hence, in June 1300, he proposed a 
law, by which the leaders of both parties were, for a time, 
exiled beyond the territories of the republic, in the hope 
that by separation their hate might be appeased, and that 
in their absence the people might enjoy prosperity. This 
law, calculated to intensify the rage of his enemies, and to 
turn even his own friends against him, he had the daring 
hardihood and the patriotism to pass. In every age the 
magnanimous man has been made the prey of meaner, though 
more politic, spirits ; and it was now as it has ever been, 
the slimy crawlers into place and power are too masterful 
in their guile for the simple honesty of the true patriot. 
The banished Neri, by their agents, whispered into the ear 
of Pope Boniface VIIL, a worldly-minded diplomatist, that 
the Bianchi had gone over to the Ghibellines, and were 
preparing, if they attained predominance in Florence, to 
join themselves to the Colonna, his personal foes. The 
Pope decided on supporting the Neri, and sent Charles of 
Valois, brother of Philip IV. of France, under the title of 
" Peacemaker," to Florence. Dante was commissioned to 
protest against this denationalization at the court of Rome, 
and to endeavour to get justice and fair play ; thus placing 
himself, in the interests of righteousness, in seeming oppo- 
sition to his family party.- During his absence, Charles 
the Peacemaker, aided by 1200 soldiers, entered the city, 
admitted the Neri to their former state and stations, called in 



The Woes of Exile. 137 

an armed peasantry, caused Nerian Priori to be appointed, 
and otherwise exhibited the favour he pretended not to feel. 
Horrible instances of pillage, slaughter, and torture occurred; 
murders were frequent, extortion abounded, and all the 
licence of brutality was exercised. Dante's house was 
attacked and plundered ; he hastened from Rome, met the 
fugitive Bianchi at Arezzo, and for the present threw in his 
lot with them. This soon became known ; as a traitor to 
his party he deserved, it was thought, no mercy. There 
are no enemies like old friends. In January 1302, a sen- 
tence was passed, condemning him to exile for two years, at 
the" end of which period, on payment of a fine of 8000 florins, 
he might return ; but failing that, his property was declared 
" forfeit to the state." Such a sentence did not daunt him ; 
he would not kneel, and fawn, and pray, and cry " peccavi" 
to any men in Christendom, when he was conscious of the 
rectitude of his own soul. But the recusant must be brought 
to terms or humbled ; so he, along with others, on the evi- 
dence of "public scandal/' was found guilty of malver- 
sation of the public trust-money, of usury and peculation, 
and sentenced to perpetual exile; or, if it should so happen 
that his longings should take him back to Florence, he was 
to be burnt to death. Then began for Dante the Inferno 
of Exile, differenced only by one immense item from the 
spirits of Malebolge; for "these have not the hope of death" 
Death had already taken to his treasure-house the divine 
Beatrice; Charles Martel, his friend; Forese Donati, his 
well-beloved kinsman ; and Guido Cavalcanti, his soul's 
brother, in this the year of his exile, had also departed. 
" What sorrow is like unto my sorrow 1 ? " he might well 
exclaim. Bereft at once of wife, children and friends, good 



133 Dante. 



. 



name, and property,— all that man values, except a proud 
sense of his own innocence, and the consciousness of powers 
yet undeveloped, at whose utterances even the hardiest shall 
wince and writhe. Too truly, O Dante, is thy life one of 
the most tragical which our world hath witnessed ! Yet 
there is strength in thee to endure it all; let us together 
thank God for that. The slow, bitter, lingering, self-con- 
suming, sorrow-haloed death in life to which thou art doomed 
worketh in thee a newer and a nobler soul; and though 
now thou art cast into the Inferno, thou shalt yet pass 
upward to II Paradiso, and be blest. Yes ! the decree is 
uttered ; it is decided that you must 

"Bid ' adieu ' to everything 
Most dearly loved— this is the first shaft 
Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt learn 
How salt the savour is of others' bread, 
Shalt feel how weary to the homeless 'tis 
To mount or to descend a stranger's stairs ; 
But what to thee shall be most bitter gall, 
Thou in those straits shalt be contacted with 
Most dastard, vile, and worthless company." 

— II Paradiso, c. xvii. 

Harsh reward this, too often given for patriot honesty ! 
In the inner life, however, there is some recompense even 
for those who stand unyieldingly, although successlessly, 
before the threatening storms of circumstance, and with the 
unfurled banner of principle strive to gather into one the 
nobler children of a land, to aim at or maintain a nation's 
freedom. There is more true pleasure in nursing, if only in 
one's thoughts, a high ideal, than in the very whirlwind of 
local passions to be driven from our moorings with regard 
to the Eternal. Yea, verily ! Hence, even of thee, O Dante, 
in this thine hour of dark trial, we may hear Hope saying — 



Sorrows Thicken as Time Passes. 139 

" To suffer woes darker than death or night, 
To love and bear, till hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates — 
This is ihy glory 7" 

Dante had reached Sienna on his way from Rome when 
the news of his exile, and the pillage and confiscation of his 
property, reached him. The Ghibelline exiles who had 
been driven from Florence met for consultation in a small 
castle at Gorgonza, near Arezzo. Dante joined them there. 
At this assembly it was resolved to retire, for a time, to the 
neighbouring city of Arezzo, and — ■ 

"Wait securely 
For the atoning hour to come. M 

Here they elected Count Alessandro da Romena for their 
leader, and appointed a council of twelve — of which Dante 
was made a member — to suggest, consider, and conduct 
such plans as might lead to their restoration. Dante strove 
to animate the souls of his co-exiles with the great thought 
which occupied his heart's core — a united, regenerated, 
nationalised Italy. They thought only of their lost posses- 
sions \ he of his country's lost glory, and her true good ; so 
he was unsuccessful. 

Pope Boniface VIII., one of the most strenuous and un- 
scrupulous assert ors of the temporal supremacy of the occu- 
pants of St Peter's chair, died in September 1303, and 
Benedict XI. " reigned in his stead." This Pope was of a 
milder and more conciliating temper than his predecessor. 
He felt anxious to restore tranquillity to Tuscany ; for this 
purpose he commissioned Cardinal de Prato to attempt the 
reconciliation of the parties, and the adjustment of their 
differences. The effort was unavailing. The ruling faction, 
under the leadership of Corso Donati, expelled the Pope's 



140 Dante. 

agent, and inexorably resisted restitution and pacification. 
Elated by their success, the Florentines gave themselves up 
to the wildest excesses. In May 1304 they prepared a 
magnificent spectacle, entitled, the "Masquerade of Damned 
Souls," in which hell and its torments were vividly repre- 
sented. So vast were the crowds that flocked to see this 
exhibition, that a wooden bridge over the Arno, which had 
been overladen by the multitude, gave way, and many 
persons were drowned. In the following month a dreadful 
fire, which destroyed 1900 buildings of various descriptions, 
broke out, and a great number of people perished. The 
Bianchi and the Ghibellines, having sought and obtained 
help from Arezzo, Bologna, and Pistoia, resolved on making 
a joint attack upon their native city, thus weakened by 
excess and death, with the intention of re-establishing them- 
selves, if possible, therein. In this attempt, through the 
jealousy and disunion of the leaders,* they failed, and 
Dante despairingly began that sad series of wanderings which 
make up the hereafter of his life. 

It is impossible to give any distinct and reliable account 
of his journeys. Nor is this needful, to enable us to know 
how severely his powers of endurance were tasked, or the 
heroic honesty with which he followed, to their direst con- 
sequences, the opinions he had formed. So much, however, 
as is known, or is fairly deducible from what is known, may 
be with brevity outlined, that it may be seen how truly " he 
learned in suffering what he taught in song." 

From " II Paradiso," xvii., it seems he found his earliest 

place of rest in Lombardy, having been invited by Bar- 

tolommeo della Scala to spend a portion of his exile there. 

Here he probably acted as tutor to his son, Can Grande della 

* " II Purgatorio," xvii., 1 10-120. 




" Dante, going about like a mendicant, bowed down by want and fatigue, 
when he knocked at the gate of the monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo, 
presented in his lineaments a whole history of woe."— Epoch Men, Page 141. 



Division is Weakness. 141 

Scala. In 1306 he was at Padua, perhaps assisting Can 
Grande with his studies at the University. In the following 
year he was one of the members of a convention held in the 
sacristy of a church belonging to the abbey of St Gaudenzio, 
in Mugello, between the Ghibellines and the Bianchi, to 
determine upon the measures to be adopted to attain the 
success of their party. Selfish jealousy seems to have over- 
powered all patriotism. Their own wounds irked them 
more than the wounds their country suffered, and it does 
not appear that any unanimous resolution was come to. 
This failure affected Dante much ; he saw the hopelessness 
of Italy's redemption, so long as internecine wars were 
waged by city against city, nay, by factions of the same city 
against each other; he saw that the divisions, the selfishness, 
the faithlessness, of his countrymen, rendered them power- 
less, and that so long as its inhabitants were swayed and 
regulated only, or even mainly, by their egotistical passions, 
and by considerations regarding their local well-being, no 
greatness was possible for Italy. Hence the lonely wanderer, 
now homeless and breadless, going about like a mendicant, 
showing, against his will, the wounds with which fortune 
had smitten him, bowed down by want, fatigue, and the 
contestings of faith and doubt, when he knocked at the 
wicket of the monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo, amid the 
mountains of Lunigiana, presented in his lineaments, hag- 
gard, pale, yet resolute, a whole history of woe. To the 
monk Hilario's query, "What seek ye here?" Dante an- 
swered, "Peace." That was a want most hard to be supplied 
to him. Nor does the convent's quietude seem to have 
yielded it; for we find that, in 1307, he had found another 
resting-place for a season in the house of the Marchese 
Morello Malespina, a Guelph, by whom he seems to have 



142 Dante. 

been honourably entertained. In 1308 Corso Donati, 
Dante's greatest political enemy and marriage relation, being 
accused of aiming at the sovereignty of Florence, fled, but 
was pursued, dragged from his horse, and slain. Albert L, 
Emperor of Germany, was murdered on the 1st of May in 
the same year. These circumstances seem to have put 
Dante on the move again. We find him wandering through 
the valleys of Casentino, and in the mountainous regions 
round Arezzo, but settling, towards the close of 1308, at 
the court of the Signori della Scala at Verona. Alboino 
della Scala at this time held the chief government here, 
although he had associated Can Grande — whom we have 
supposed to be a pupil of Dante's — in the rulership with him. 
These Signori were the mightiest of the Ghibelline chiefs, 
and there can be little doubt but that Dante went thither to 
aid in the consultations which must have been entered into 
in consequence of the changed position of parties after the 
demise of Corso Donati, and the accession of Henry VII. 
of Luxemburg. It was at the court of Verona that Dante 
wrote, in the Latin language, his great prose work, " Con- 
cerning Monarchy," an abstract of his theory of political 
principles, and a defence of national government. 

Of this work we present our readers with the following 
abstract, that they may be able to form a judgment regard- 
ing the politics of Dante, and the correctness of our esti- 
mate of his influence on the national movement : — God is 
one. The universe is an idea of God's, and is therefore one. 
God is the source of all; all, therefore, partakes of His 
nature. Man is the most excellent product of creation. As 
such he must tend continually to a state of perfectness, and 
strive, by holiness and knowledge, to attain a likeness to, if 
not a union with, God. Individual man is too short lived 



Italian Nationality. 143 

to accomplish this; but man has an historic and collective 
being, as well as an individual life. Humanity, aggregate 
man, is long-lived and indefinitely progressive. Humanity, 
like God, is one. Harmony and, as a consequence, asso- 
ciation are the conditions of co-working unity. Unity must 
be embodied and represented. To give embodiment to 
human unity, there must be an outer form — government, 
and an inner spirit — law. A people aggregated into an 
organic whole, by a general agreement under the same laws 
and government, constitutes a nation. Law and govern- 
ment, however, must have means of enforcement, and hence 
arises the need of an imperial or other head; not as a 
superior to, but as an agent of, the law ; as the agent of the 
people, the chief administrator of the law, and the repre- 
sentative to other nationalities of the will of the incorporated 
citizens of the state over which he bears rule. Here the 
sovereign is clearly differentiated from the Pope, and the 
essential greatness of individual man is not lost sight of in 
the blaze of the grandeur of imperialism. 

Such is the leading thought of Dante's book. Looking 
at the distracted condition of Italy in his time, how much 
difficulty seemed in the way of realising this vast conception! 
In the midst of Italian anarchy, where was the unifier, the 
consolidator % The popes had deserted the people so soon 
as their power was established, and the petty princes of his 
country bore the imprint of the holy father's heel in the 
hollow of their necks. The German emperors struggled 
against absorption into the pontificate, and fought for the 
possession of temporal power, free from the papal yoke. So 
far as the people were concerned, all virtue had departed 
from the Papacy ; no trust could be reposed in it for the 
upraising of an Italian nationality. Henry VII. alone 



144 Dante. 






appeared capable of effecting these great ends. Having 
finished his work, Dante addressed a circular letter " to the 
kings, dukes, marquises, counts, the senators of Rome, and 
the people of Italy," in which he strove to show that in the 
temporal sovereignty of Henry VII. lay the only hope of a 
peaceful, flourishing, and truly national Italy. This letter, 
coupled with his exposition of the principles of monarchy, 
seem to have had some effect, because in 13 10, Henry VII. 
having entered Italy, was crowned King of Lombardy. At 
this time, Can Grande attended him with a body of troops, 
and gave him efficient aid in overcoming his enemies at 
Cremona, Brescia, &c. For this the Emperor conferred 
upon him the Imperial Vicariate of Lombardy. Henry 
seems to have hesitated in his course, and Dante, burning 
with impatience to re-enter his native city, addressed a 
letter to him, dated Tuscia, April 13 11, requesting him to 
tarry no longer by the " wandering Po," but passing the 
Apennines, to approach in hostile array against the Guelphs 
on "Arno's shelvy sides," and shatter the pride of the 
Florentines. Henry did enter Tuscany, and threatened 
Florence, but took no active measures to fulfil his menaces. 
After being crowned at Rome, he seems to have attempted 
a reconciliation between the different parties. From this 
effort he was soon obliged to desist, because Robert, King 
of Sicily and Naples, opposed Henry's attainment of the 
royal honours of Rome. In an expedition against him, 
Henry, having reached Buonconventi, near Sienna, sud- 
denly died, it is suspected, of poison. This was a fearful 
blow to Ghibellinism ; but to Dante, who had so enthu- 
siastically advocated the claims of Henry, it was especially 
disastrous. He took refuge again in Verona, but disap- 
pointment had somewhat soured his temper, and broken the 



The Woes of Exile. 145 

elasticity of his spirits. The services he had rendered to the 
Ghibelline cause, though great, had now, from no fault of 
his however, produced a reaction in favour of the Guelphs, 
and he himself was ungenerously exposed to the sneers of 
the courtiers of Verona. Dante's was not a spirit that could 
brook such treatment ; when, therefore, in a merry moment, 
shortly after the court fools had been amusing a company, 
Alboino, Prince of Verona, and elder brother of Can Grande, 
turning full upon Dante, musing in moody silence on his 
many woes, asked him why fools were so much more popular 
at princes' courts than philosophers, Dante curtly answered, 
" Like loves like," rose from the table, and not long there- 
after bade farewell to Verona. 

After this we have traces of his having visited Conte 
Guido Salvatico, at Casentino; the Signori della Fag- 
giola, in Urbino, and of his having been courteously enter- 
tained in the castle of Colmollaro, by Busone da Gubbio, 
a poet and patriot, whom he had met at Arezzo in the first 
year of his exile. Besides these places of sojourn, we may 
mention Udine, Trento, and Friuli. In the latter place he 
dwelt with Pagano della Torre, the patriarch of Aquileia. It 
is probable that in the castle of Lanteri Paratico, near Brescia, 
he composed portions of his immortal poem. Many other 
places have been named — e.g., Oxford, Paris, and several 
places in Germany. Of these, however, little is known with 
certainty. We believe that Dante's love of country was too 
great to allow of his leaving the land which refused to ac- 
knowledge him as one of her diviner sons. In these wander- 
ings his distress must have been great ; for we find him, 
with importunate persistency, petitioning for a recall of his 
sentence, and permission to return to the sweet bosom of 
Florence, " wherein," he says, " I had my birth and nourish- 

K 



146 Dante. 

ment, even to the ripeness of my age, and in which, with 
her good-will, I desire, with all my heart, to rest this wearied 
spirit of mine, and to terminate the time allotted to me on 
earth." How grievously must his hopes have been crushed, 
and all their blossoms have faded, when his strong soul, 
bowed by the unblest weight of exile, could stoop to en- 
treaty ! 

But though willing to sue for release from an unjust sen- 
tence, and to beg permission to lay his sorrow-tried dust 
within St John the Baptist's Church in Florence, he was yet 
unwilling to utter the cowardly lie by which alone he could 
receive a revocation of the judgment which his victorious 
fellow-citizens had passed on him. He would not confess 
guilt when he felt none, or plead for pardon on such terms 
as would imply the justice of the award from which he suf- 
fered. Therefore when a friend, in 13 16, had so far suc- 
ceeded as to gain a provisional rescindment of his sentence 
on some such unholy conditions, he rejected the proffer in 
these heroic terms : — " Is such an invitation to return to his 
country glorious for Dante, after suffering in exile almost 
fifteen years % Is it thus, then, they would recompense inno- 
cence which all the world knows, and the labour and fatigue 
of unremitting study % . . . Far from the man who cries 
aloud for justice be this compromise, by his money, with his 
persecutors. No, my father ! this is not the way that shall 
lead me back to my country. But I shall return with hasty 
steps, if you or any other can open to me a way which shall 
not derogate from the fame and honour of Dante ; but if by 
no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I shall 
never enter. What ! shall I not everywhere enjoy the light 
of the sun and stars i and may I not seek and contemplate, 
in every corner of the earth under the canopy of heaven, 



Where is Peace to be Found? 147 

consoling and delightful Truth, without first rendering my- 
self inglorious, nay, infamous, to the people and republic of 
Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me." He rejected 
those " sold and lying privileges/' and went forth to front 
his fate again, 

"As one 

That makes no pause, but presses on his road, 

Whate'er betide him." 

The two succeeding years seem to have been given up 
to wandering, "lean abstinence/' the composition of that 
" sacred poem" which had made 

"Both heaven and earth copartners of its toil," 

and the indulgence of the visionary hopes that his growing 
fame would yet prevail with Florence to recall him, and enable 
him to "claim," even at the Baptistery, — where, in his )'ounger 
years, he had saved a child's life, — " the wreath due to the 
poet's temples." It has been conjectured, and not without 
probability, from many passages in the " Commedia," that 
at this period he entered a Franciscan monastery in the 
mountains of Umbria, and that having passed his novitiate, 
he found himself unwilling to draw "the shuttle to the 
point/' and forsook the brotherhood, convinced " it is not 
the habit of St Benedict, St Augustine, St Francis, or St 
Domenic that constitutes a religious life, but that God de- 
mands the worship of the soul." After this, he gained a 
fitter refuge, where 

"Polenta's eagle broods, 
And in his broad circumference of plume 
O'ershadows Cervia." 

Here, in the mansion of Guido Novello da Polenta, a muni- 
ficent patron of literature, and himself somewhat distin- 
guished as a poet, Dante found an ungrudged home, 



148 Dante. 

congenial companionship, and honourable patronage. To 
Guido's service Dante enthusiastically devoted all his ener- 
gies and much of his affection. Guido, on his part, esti- 
mated rightly the talents and the trustworthiness of his 
guest ; for on a quarrel arising between the Ravennese and 
the Venetians, he commissioned Dante as his ambassador 
to conduct such negotiations as seemed necessary. The 
Venetians obstinately refused to listen to any terms, and 
Dante returned to Ravenna disheartened and successless. 
At this he fairly gave way ; nothing could abate or restrain 
his grief. This deep and serious soul, so sadly tried in the 
very furnace of affliction, thought so intensely and felt so 
keenly his powerlessness to effect the wishes of his bene- 
factor, that the over-bent bow snapped, and his spirit quitted 
its tenement of clay, September 13 21, aged fifty-six. Guido 
Novello had him sumptuously interred, and ordered a monu- 
ment to be erected over his resting-place ; but this he did 
not live to see accomplished ; in a few months thereafter he 
followed Dante to the tomb. Florence repented when it 
was too late. 

At the time of Dante's exile, his family consisted of five 
sons and a daughter. The daughter, named Beatrice, in 
memory of her who had created in him a new life, became 
a nun in Ravenna, the city where her father found a tomb. 
Two of his sons survived him : one, Pietro, became a lawyer 
in Verona, and rejected reinstatement in his father's posses- 
sions with as much haughtiness as he could have wished. 
Both sons inherited a portion of their father's genius, and 
unitedly composed a commentary on the " Divina Comme- 
dia." It is a sufficient rebutment of the charges brought 
against the character of Gemma Donati, that she trained her 
children to revere their father's name and value his honour ; 



His Life and his Life's Thought. 149 

that she educated them well upon the scanty savings she 
could glean from the wreck of fortune in which she was 
involved \ and that even from Corso Donati, her kinsman 
and her husband's foe, she would receive nothing that could 
taint her name or Dante's with dishonour. There is a truer 
romance in such honest endeavour and suffering than in the 
prevalent whinings made upon the unpropitious nature ot 
the married life of genius. 

Such is an outline of the life of Dante. A sad and tra- 
gical life, yet a true one. Faith, hope, labour, suffering, all 
these have stamped their seal upon his fate; but, trium- 
phant over all, his life and his life's thought still work their 
influences through the world. The grand problem of Italian 
organic nationality is not yet solved ; but many labourers 
are engaged in striving to realise the ideal of the poet. 
Dante is the utterer of the initial thought of modern poli- 
tics — the nation. In the ancient world we had the Patri- 
archate manifested in Chaldea, the Empire • developed in 
Egypt, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, and the City partially 
organised in Greece. In mediaeval times, Germany and 
France attempted to revive the Empire, while Italy endea- 
voured to re-establish the City. But over all these the 
Hierarchy reared its throne, and claimed supremacy; the 
Church overstrode home, city, and empire, as infinitely less 
than itself. Dante saw that social and imperial life were 
equally imperilled, and introduced that modification of 
imperialism and citizenship which we now denominate a 
Nationality. This nationality he asserted to be altogether 
independent of the Papal rule, and established for other 
purposes than the Popedom could accomplish. Surely there 
is a moral sublimity in this life ! A breadless exile, con- 
sumed by the gnawing tortures of unjustly imposed woes, 



1 50 Dante. 

the adviser of kings, the denouncer of Papal dishonesty, 
the censor of morals, the advocate of orthodoxy, the avenger 
of successful crime, the political teacher of Italy, the creator 
of the language and the poetry of Tuscany, the prophet of 
his nation, — when were so many seeming incompatibilities 
ever before conjoined in one man % 

Such a sketch as we have now given, brief as it is, may 
suffice to show that a man may work out a noble purpose, 
even though the environments of his life are not such as he 
would choose ; that amid difficulties and privations know- 
ledge may be acquired and applied ; and that an unflagging 
zeal for one's country may co-exist with expressed and 
recorded dissatisfaction with the present state and doings of 
that country. Who can fail to admire the stern decision, 
the calm strength, the resolute heroism, the constant self- 
sustainment, the grand inflexible honesty Dante always 
exhibited ] Like Milton's angel, 

" Unmoved, 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal ; 
Nor numbers nor example with him wrought, 
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind." 




Chaucer — English Literature. 

A.D. 1 328-14OO. 



M Chaucer ! our Helicon's first fountain-stream, 
Our morning star of song, that led the way 
To welcome the long-after coming beam 
Of Spenser's lights and Shakespeare's perfect day. 
Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay, 
As if they ne'er had died : he group'd and drew 
Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay, 
That still they live and breathe in fancy's view, 
Fresh beings fraught with truths imperishable true. " — Campbell. 



"The first finder of our language." — Occleve, 



i Of our language he was the lode-star." — Lydgate, 



"Dan Chaucer well of English undefyled." — Spenser. 



' Chaucer, five hundred years ago, first set our English life to English 
music. " — Brimley. 



"Chaucer, the Homer of our poetry, and the true father of English 
literature." — G. L. Craik. 




THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 

j|N the south aisle of Westminster Abbey, one fine 
old Gothic piece of ornamental sculpture stands 
out, distinguishably from all others for its look of 
hoar antiquity, though little more than three centuries have 
elapsed since, as a labour of love, "one Nicholas Brigham," 
erected it. That marks the burial-place of Chaucer, the 
first distinctively English poet. Though " black oblivion's 
rust" has played "fantastic tricks" with the singer's effigy, 
it has little dimmed his fame ; for the preservative magic of 
genius has thrown around it undecaying spells, so that 
" near it there may never come suspect or danger." This, 
however, was not the earliest memorial of 

"The noble rhetor poet of Britain, 
That made first to distil and rain 
The gold dewdrops of speech and eloquence 
Into our tongue ;" 

for Caxton (who collected, edited, and printed an issue of 
the " Canterbury Tales") placed above his grave a slab with 
this inscription, written by a learned Milanese : — 

" Gulfredus Chaucer vates, et fama poesis 
Maternse, hac sacra sum tumulatus humo." 

Of one to whom such unwonted honours had been paid, it 
would be fair to conclude that there was warrant in his life, 



154 Chaucer. 

works, and influence for them all, and that those dear "re- 
membrances of the dead" were but indications of the worth 
of the living. Nor would the inference be uncorroborated by 
the fact. Chaucer's life was eventful ; his works have even yet 
a living interest for living men, and his influences pulsate 
even now in the heart of modern civilisation. In the 
morning of our English life this keenly nationalised poet 
became not only the exponent of the buxom age of Edward 
III., but also a marked leader in that party whose genius 
insinuates the principles of development into their own 
generation, and who thus become the progenitors of the 
progress of after-times. He is a great, healthy, vigorous 
soul, whose Norman nature had been thoroughly impressed 
in the Saxon mint, and who issued the "coinage of his 
brain" in the despised vernacular of actual life; broke the 
Latin moulds and the French dies in which language was 
then cast or pressed \ and touched with everlasting nation- 
ality the form and substance of our English speech. 

To those who rightly comprehend the immense importance 
of a pure and noble language in bringing about and sustaining 
a healthy and generous nationality of thought and feeling ■ 
who look upon literature not only as one of the issues, but 
also as one of the communicators of life ; who trace the 
influence of words upon the natural and spiritual energies of 
man ; — it will appear at once an invaluable service done to 
our race, to suffuse and vivify the expressions which men 
most use with the dyes of poesy and the formative activity 
of genius. The testimony of centuries unanimously accords 
to Chaucer the glory of having been the masculine factor 
in the begetting of our present English speech; and he 
merits acknowledgment as the creator of an epoch from 
which men date the birth and uprise of an English language 



Early Life and Upbringing. 155 

and an English nationality ; for then, indeed, did the anta- 
gonistic forces which, since the invasion of the Norman 
conqueror, had kept the races which peopled England 
asunder, coalesce and co-operate, till they became a new 
unity, and attained individuality and being — a being which 
is one and indivisible with the rich traditions of our past 
history, and the freshest facts in our present literature. To 
the life and times of this " our morning star of song," a 
little attention may be devoted, if we have hearts alive to 
the admiration and emulation of the great forefathers of our 
country's glory. 

The name — Chaucer — is decidedly Norman inform, and 
it occurs in Battel Abbey Roll, — a list of men of note who 
accompanied William the Conqueror to England, 1066. 
We read also of one Joannes Chaucer, cives Londinensis, 
in 1299; and we know on the best authority — his own 
statement — that Geoffrey Chaucer was born in " the citye 
of London/' which, he says, "is to me so dere and swete, 
in which I was forth grow en; and more kindly love have I 
to that place than to any other in yearth, — as every kindly 
creature has to that place of his kindly engendure — and to 
virtue, rest, and peace in that stede to abide." The date 
of his birth, 1328, has been usually construed from the 
inscription, said to have been placed on his earliest monu- 
ment, which asserted that he " died in 1400, aged 72 ;" and 
though an attempt has been made to upset, or at least inva- 
lidate this chronology by reference to a document in the 
Heralds' College, bearing date 1386, wherein Chaucer, upon 
oath, inter alia, deposes that he was then " of the age of 
forty years and upwards, armed for twenty-seven years," we 
see no good ground for unsettling the concurrent belief of 
centuries. The poet does not here seem to be attesting his 



156 Chaucer. 

precise age, but to be merely and formally asserting that he 
is above that age, below which testimony regarding points in 
heraldry would be possessed of little reliability. If this 
were his exact age, he must have borne arms when little 
more than thirteen, and been then engaged in the French 
wars, which is rather improbable. We accept, therefore, 
the current chronology, that Chaucer was born seven years 
after the death of Dante, and that he was the junior by 
four years of the reformer Wycliffe, (13 24-1384.) 

It has been matter of dispute whether Chaucer's father 
was a knight, a merchant, or a vintner — a matter of no 
great importance to us. The balance of probabilities in- 
clines to the conclusion that his parents were in easy 
circumstances, within the then pretty wide limits of the 
court circle, and that he was educated with a view to diplo- 
matic, or at least civil service life — as if, indeed, his educa- 
tion was to be his outfit for the world. We never hear of 
his having any patrimonial inheritance, or other resources 
than those conferred on him by state grant, or derived from 
government appointments. That his education was care- 
fully conducted, assiduously forwarded, and well taken advan- 
tage of, we have the best of proofs — in the erudition which his 
works display. He was early fitted for commencing a uni- 
versity career, where "he might leren gentilesse aright," 
which he began, it has been generally believed, at Cam- 
bridge. This appears highly probable ; for in his poems 
he is minute in his Cambridge localisation ; and he speaks 
of himself in " The Court of Love," — his earliest poem, 
written in his eighteenth- year, — as " Philogenet of Cam* 
bridge, Clerk f but we do not know whether at the 

" Gret college 
Men clepe the Soler Hall at Cantebrege," 



England in the Fourteenth Century. 157 

or elsewhere. The universities were not in those days 
frequented by the sons of the nobility, nor had they that 
air of wealthy luxury which they now have and aspire after. 
They were then the resorts rather of the middle classes, as 
is manifest from the fact that in the youth of Chaucer — we 
have the statement on the authority of Fitz-Ralph, Arch- 
bishop of Armagh, before Pope Innocent VI., in 1357, at 
Avignon — the University of Oxford had about 30,000 stu- 
dents. The proverbial adjective of poor, so often and so 
truly predicable of scholars, was then an almost unexcep- 
tionable connotative term. Chaucer's own maxim, " Sondrie 
scoles maken subtil clerkes," may be one of those uncon- 
scious autobiographic strokes which few writers have been 
able altogether to avoid giving ; for Wood records a tradition 
that he was a pupil of Wycliffe's ; and Leland — who is, 
however, not over-trustworthy — talks of his being, on 
leaving Oxford, " an acute, logical, and pleasant speaker, a 
poet, a grave philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, and 
lastly, a sound theologian." It is even stated that his 
studies were finished at Paris, whence, after travelling 
through France and Holland, he returned about 1355, and 
commenced, as is supposed, a course of reading in the law. 
While spending so many years in the pursuit and acquire- 
ment of knowledge, in a seemingly omnivorous gluttony of 
books, and in the attainment of a manifold experience of 
men and their ways, besides employing himself in the 
making, 

" In the flowre of his youthe, 
In sondrie waies as he well couthe, 
Of dytyes and of songes glad ;" 

we canrtot but suppose the poet, either consciously or 
unconsciously, to have been engaged in suitable preparation 



158 Chaucer. 






for the great tasks which lay before him in life. In his 
power and inclination to work his own experience into verse, 
Chaucer is quite Goethean, and the myriad phases of exist- 
ence which he paints are our chief key to the peculiarities 
of his age. He was implicated, complicated, and entwined 
with much of the thought and action of his century, and he 
touched and impressed it with a vigour and energy which 
made a distinct and lasting mark on the future of the 
nation. It was an age of rare vitality and variety of event. 
There was a hearty, healthy, home-felt, emphatic enthusiasm 
in it. The differing streams of race were now confluent 
and neighbourly. The stripling king, — Edward III., — who 
but a year before the birth of Chaucer had set his step on 
the throne of his murdered father, as his years increased, 
displayed a self-willed ambition, a chivalry and gallantry, 
which endeared him to his subjects, while it added to the 
glory of their country. The stout, stubborn, politic course 
of his grandfather fired him to emulation, while the vanity 
and luxuriousness of his nature led him to indulge in costly 
pageantries and dainty banquets, in emblematic jousts and 
well-consorted shows. In his court, therefore, there was a 
sort of spring-tide life, — young, lusty, free, showy, though 
unripe. Before Chaucer had reached his thirtieth year, the 
king's crown was encircled with the laurels of Halidon Hill, 
{}ZZZl) Shrys, (1340,) Crecy, (1346,) Calais, (1347,) and 
Poictiers, (1356.) His queen Philippa had shown the 
heroism of her disposition at Nevil's Cross, (1346,) and the 
kindliness of her heart at Calais. At this particular time, 
wherever the British forces 

" Do tread the measures of their tragic march," 

victory smiles upon their " painful traffic," and bestows 



The Coitrt and Court Life. 159 

upon them the bloody glory of success. Though the fetid 
vapours and putrific malaria of the Black Death had swept 
with mysterious and relentless destructiveness through the 
land, prosperity seemed to favour the sovereign who had so 
encouraged industrial pursuits as to welcome and befriend 
those skilled in the processes of textile manufactures. "The 
Order of the Garter (1344) had been instituted within the 
castle of Windsor, which, under the careful eye of William 
Wykeham, had lately been built as a fit residence for an 
English sovereign, with a pageant of unparalleled grandeur, 
and a liberality and gorgeousness such as had never before 
been seen in the memory of man. The Commons of Eng- 
land were gaining a voice in public affairs, and, acting on 
the maxim that "the sovereign's exigencies are the subjects' 
chances," were striving after a constitutional form of govern- 
ment, and the realisation of a distinct and self-contained 
nationality. 

Would we be far wrong, remembering the tradition of the 
occasion of its origin, to suppose that " The Court of Love" 
was suggested to the young poet by the grand ongoings of 
the institution of the Order of the Garter, and that it was 
intended as a delicate allusion to, and celebration of, the 
splendid ceremony with which it was inaugurated'? We 
know that the court was not entirely insensible to literary 
merit ; for Queen Philippa was the patroness of Froissart, 
(whose "Chronicles," extending from 1326-1400, rather 
more than cover the entire era of Chaucer's life,) and that 
he held an office in the household of Edward III. ; we have 
besides good reason to believe that Chaucer, though mainly 
valued on account of his excellent and rare business capacity, 
was somewhat favoured, too, in consideration of his poetical 
abilities. But of this more anon. 



1 60 Chaucer. 






Perhaps the next occupation of our author was the tran* 
slation of the " De Consolatione Philosophise" of Boethius, 
— a work previously translated into Saxon by Alfred the 
Great, and subsequently into modern English by Elizabeth, 
— the favourite classic of that age, and a favourable speci- 
men of the prose style of this " garnisher of Englishe rude." 
To this period, also, is generally ascribed the production of 
"Troilus and Creseide," a work of singular excellence, the 
rhythm and rhyme of which were imitated by Shakespeare 
in "The Rape of Lucrece," and its subject in 1609 made 
the foundation of one of his favourite plays. Chaucer at 
this time diligently and purposely engaged in the polishing 
and modulation of the English tongue. This is particularly 
evident from the anxiety which the poet exhibits towards 
the conclusion of that poem, regarding his work, and how it 
might be transcribed or recited, saying, 

" And, for ; there is so great diversitie 

In English and in writing of our tong, 

So pray I God that none miswrite thee, 

Ne thee mis -metre for defaut of tong. 

And redde whereso thou be, or else song, 
That thou be understood, God I beseech, 
But yet to purpose of my rather [early] speech." 

This poem is still further interesting, because it gives us 
a glimpse of the companions of Chaucer, and shows what 
sort of men he valued in his youth. This we learn from 
the following dedicatory lines : — 

"O moral Gower, this booke I direct 

To thee and to the philosophical Strood, 
To vouchesauf there need is to correct 
Of your benignities and zeales good." 

The friends here referred to were men of condition and 
repute. The former is a famed contemporary poet, and 



Literary Aspirations. 161 

the latter a " most excellent philosopher," whom, in after 
days, Chaucer entrusted with the upbringing of his favourite 
son. We may further infer, from the double and distinctly 
specific ascription, that its author was pretty equally divided 
between philosophy and poetry, at the same time that we 
learn most expressly that a larger ambition animated his 
breast \ for the following are the terms in which he dismisses 
his literary labour : — 

"Go, litel booke ! Go, litel tragedie, 

There God my Maker yet ere that I die, 

So send me might to make some Cominedie. 

But, litel booke, make thou thee none envie, 

But subject ben unto all poesie ; 

And kiss the steps whereon thou seest pace, 
Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan, Stace." 

Chaucer was acquainted with the best classics procurable 
in his day; conversant with the works of many of the 
Latin Fathers, the Schoolmen, and the mediaeval Romanti- 
cists. The plot of "Troilus and Creseide" is, he informs 
us, taken from Lollius, (an author of whom nothing is now 
known.) It is similar in outline to the "Filistrato" of 
Boccaccio, who mentions the story as having its original in 
Greek. Translation is almost invariably the form in which 
art influences a language \ and imitativeness, no less than 
originality, belong to the true poet. Dante, addressing 
Virgil, says, — 

" It is from thee alone that I derive 
The graceful style which gains me such applause." 

Dante, (1265-132 1,) Petrarch, (1304-1374,) and Boccaccio, 
(13 1 2-13 7 5,) undoubtedly influenced Chaucer and his con- 
temporaries j the Elizabethan writers were touched by the 
music of Tasso (1544-1575) and Ariosto, (1474-1533.) Cor- 

L 



1 62 Chaucer. 

neille, Racine, and Moliere affected the age of the Restora- 
tion ; the writers who flourished till the time "when George 
the Third was king," stimulated the German school, which, 
beginning with Klopstock, culminated in Goethe ; and these 
again wrought upon Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron ; and in 
all these ages translation preluded actual originality, and 
transplanting preceded propagation. Chaucer was not, 
therefore, singular in the mode he took for working out an 
acceptable national speech, by reproducing reputed and 
reputable poems from the Latin, French, or Italian, rather 
than by throwing the whole energy of his thought into new 
poems of his own. By the former method he asked 
acceptance for the language only, yet prepared the way for 
the introduction, in good time, of a fresh and home-grown 
literature, such as the age required, national in thought, 
feeling, allusiveness, and speech. 

It was a far-thoughted and patriotic purpose to detach his 
native country from intellectual dependence upon France ; 
to supply an instrument for the interchange of opinion, the 
promulgation of knowledge, and the business wants of so- 
ciety, which should be the nation's own, one not borrowed 
from aliens and enemies; and to provide a vesture for 
thought in which the bounding and abounding life, energy, 
and intellect of his age might dress itself, and be known as 
distinct and different from that country with whom England 
was waging war. It was courtierly, too, thus to second the 
desire of the king's heart, by a move of so resistless a nature, 
and by an agency so effectual. It was a wise and diplo- 
matic scheme, furthering at once the best interests of the 
nation, his own fame, and the policy of his sovereign. So, 
for the promotion of his design, he translated into " num- 
bers touched with harmony," some of the more popular 




1 Within a lodge out of the way, 
Beside a well in a forest." — Epoch Men, Page 163 



Diplomacy and Courtier ship. 163 

classic tales, that the language might be purified and indi- 
vidualised ; and that the disjunction of the nations might be 
facilitated, he took one of the most popular of French 
poefois, " The Romaunt of the Rose/' and transferred its 
wondrous allegories into the form of speech current in his 
days. He thus not only complied with, but led and directed 
the spirit of the time, gratified his own taste, and extended 
his own fame, while he cultivated, by assiduous labour, the 
power of expression, and the polish of diction. 

It is probable that Chaucer kept always within the range 
of court, and had a due diplomatic acquaintanceship with 
its modes, fashions, and ongoings ; for about this time he 
w T as the recognised friend and associate of King Edward's 
third son, John of "Gaunt, then Earl of Richmond, though 
subsequently Duke of Lancaster, who married (Blanche, 
afterwards mother of Henry IV.,) 19th May 1359. In 
celebration of the courtship of this pair, Chaucer had pro- 
duced a poem, entitled " The Parliament of Birds," a fan- 
ciful allegory. "The Complaint of the Black Knight/' a 
defence of Gaunt from some aspersions thrown on his 
character; and "The Dream of the Dutchesse," an epi- 
thalamium on the union of John and Blanche, are also 
referable to this period. The minuteness with which 
Chaucer describes the localities of Woodstock has given 
rise to the supposition that he resided there, — 

" Within a lodge out of the way, 
Beside a well in a forest," 

and was a retainer of the happy bridegroom, whom he ac- 
companied to France in the autumn of 1359, in a military 
capacity, along with the army of Edward III., one of the 
greatest and best which had then left the English coasts. 



1 64 Chaucer. 

A hundred thousand men, in a thousand ships, left Eng- 
land, — in the capital of which the King of France was thei; 
a prisoner, — and landing at Calais, marched with triumphant, 
though hardily resisted tread, as far as Rheims, in which 
Edward III. hoped to place upon his brow the sovereign 
circlet of France. The place was well fortified, and de- 
fended bravely. Edward beleaguered it awhile, but ulti- 
mately raised the siege and retired — losing prestige, however, 
by the act — to try his success on Paris. Here the fates were 
equally unpropitious, and he fell back towards Brittany. 
Hunger, fatigue, superstition, and storm fought against him. 
As he became depressed, the French got'elated, and though 
unable to venture into the open field, they endeavoured by 
harassments in. flank and rear to secure the chance of vic- 
tory their new allies had given them. In one of these forays, 
near the town of Retiers, in Brittany, Chaucer had the sad 
hap to be taken prisoner. This, in addition to his own 
share of the former hardships, was a sufficiently bitter taste 
of war's woes. How long his fortitude and powers of en- 
durance were tried by captivity we cannot tell ; but we hope 
that the peace of Bretigny, signed in 1360, would, among 
other things, secure his freedom. 

In " The Dream of the Dutchesse," Chaucer indicated 
that a lady had charmed his heart \ and we learn that on 
12th September 1366, a pension of ten marks (^120) was 
granted to Philippa Chaucer, one of the ladies of Queen 
Philippa's household; so that we must suppose he was 
married prior to this date, and was now leaving, or had 
already left, her Majesty's service. The wife of Chaucer 
was, according to the best authorities, Philippa Pyckard, 
daughter of Sir Payne Pyckard de Rouet, Guienne king-at- 
arms, sister of Katherine Swyneford nie Pyckard of Rouet, 



Friendship with Petrarch. 165 

and subsequently wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 
and Regent of Guienne \ and of that Henry Pyckard; Lord 
Mayor of London, who had welcomed the Black Prince 
with the captive King John, on their arrival from France 
after the battle of Poictiers. The duties he performed 
meanwhile may be guessed at from the next notice we have 
of him, as receiving — June 20th, 1367 — from the king, for 
former and future service, under the designation of "our 
w r ell-beloved yeoman," (dilectus valettus noster,) an annuity 
of twenty marks (56*240.) On Christmas 1368, his wife 
received a robe in gift from the queen. In 1369 botl? 
Queen Philippa and the Lady Blanche of Lancaster died, 
and Chaucer wrote a lament for the latter, entitled " The 
Death of Blanche the Dutchesse." On the 20th June 1370, 
he received letters of protection from the king, that he 
might go abroad, though for what purpose we know not, in 
his service. In 1372, a more important commission for 
him [and for us] was entrusted to him, viz., to form, along 
with John de Mari and James Pronam, a committee of 
investigation in Genoa, regarding the English port, which 
might be most advantageously used by the Genoese in 
furtherance of their commercial pursuits. While occupied 
with this mission, it is said that Chaucer had the good for- 
tune to be introduced to 

"Frauncis Petrark, the laureat poet, 
Highte this clerk, whose rhetorik sweete 
1 Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie ; " 

and there to have heard from "the lover of Laura" the tale 
of the patient " Griselda." This is neither impossible nor 
improbable, — indeed quite the opposite. Petrarch was 
then (1370^4) residing, an industrious invalid, at Padua, and 
had completed his version of Boccaccio's famous story from 



1 66 Chaucer. 

Italian into Latin — published under the title, "A Myth on 
Wifely Obedience and Fidelity," — in June 1373. Nothing 
could be more natural than that the chief poet of England 
should endeavour to see " the first real restorer of polite 
letters, — him who gave purity, elegance, and stability to the 
Italian language." Now, as Chaucer was seemingly not 
well versed in Italian, is it at all unlikely that their conver- 
sation would be holden in Latin, of his proficiency in 
which Petrarch prided himself, and Chaucer had no need 
to be ashamed % In the currency of such talk, what more 
probable than that Dante and Boccaccio should become the 
subjects of mutual criticism, and that Petrarch should 
reckon it a privilege to rehearse his version of his friend 
yet rival's beautiful and unexceptionable story, and that 
thus " he learned at Padowe" the tale he has embalmed in 
ever-living verse, in his favourite metre, and with the utmost 
elegance of style, regarding the patience and fidelity of 
"Griselda?" The thought is too sweet to be lightly given 
up, and we cling to the belief most fondly, though we trust 
not irrationally. Chaucer returned to home and country in 
February 1374, and on the 19th of July Petrarch was found 
in his library, with a book before him, dead, " his wordes 
and his work" done, and remembrance of him only left for 
the world. There is surely some trait of personal grief in 
the kindly way Chaucer speaks of him, and in the attach- 
ment — to his notice of the interview — of the morale, which 
reads like an involuntary and self-referring sigh : — 

" But Dethe, that wol not suffre us dwellen here, 
But as it were the twinkling of an eye, 
Him now hath slaine, and alle we shal die." 

From the era of the Conquest (1066) till the days of 
Chaucer the literature of England consisted almost entirely 



English L anguage and L iter attire . 167 

of translations or imitations of Norman chronicles and 
romances. 

The Norman o-Franks — the haughty aristocracy of con- 
quest — insisted on the general use of the Norman tongue 
by the vanquished. The steady undercurrents of common 
daily life, however, gave the Anglo-Saxons sufficient oppor- 
tunity for keeping in living usage the speech of their fore- 
fathers. Ceasing, by the gradual force of circumstances, to 
be embodied in writing, or employed in popular public con- 
verse, the strict grammatical forms of inflection and syntax 
were neglected or forgotten : language became simpler and 
looser in texture by becoming wholly oral. In this stage of 
transition it is now called semi-Saxon. For a time the exotic 
tongue appeared likely to get acclimatised ; and great care 
was taken to aid its dissemination and growth. Children were 
taught in French, that they might know French, and that, 
by this early training, their vernacular might be supplanted, 
not only in favour, but in use. 

As a general summary of the history of language, it may 
be affirmed that [1st] from the Conquest till the demise of 
Stephen, (1154,) the French language was forcefully main- 
tained as that of the court, the law, and the ordinary inter- 
course of the conquerors with their vassals; [2d] from the 
accession of Henry II. till the close of the long reign of 
Henry III., (1272,) the native Anglo-Saxon existed in revolt 
against, and in spite of, the Norman influence used for its 
suppression ; and [3d] during the reigns of the three 
Edwards, (1272-1377,) the "Dames' tongue" of England 
regained its olden power. The French became thereafter 
only a graff into, not the root-stock of, the speech of 
Englishmen ; and a free field was left for the careful culture 
of the native language of England. 



1 68 Chaucer. 

Chaucer was a far-seeing man, who kept his eye upon 
causes, and was quick and sure at tracing their effects. 
His contemporary, Gower, in the uncertainties of the time, 
gave hostages to fame, and made appeal to posterity in the 
three prevalent languages of the period, viz. — of the church 
and learning, Latin \ of the court and fashion, French \ of 
the people and progress, English ; — but Chaucer had no 
such hesitancy. Though skilled in the learned tongues, he 
placed himself unreservedly at the head of the minstrels of 
his native land, with his earliest poem, and he continued to 
aim at and to seek popularity and influence throughout a 
long life by distinctively English 

"Bokes, songis, and dities," 

by giving the colloquial forms of his own land's language 
permanency, consistency, and literary existence ; by apply- 
ing the conserving magic of genius to the speech of the 
people, and by saturating and colouring the words of the 
common vocabulary of his time with the imperishable 
hues of thought, sympathy, life. Thus he became the 
ancestor of that long line of descendants who have planted 
"the seeds and pregnant forms " of thought in the fields of 
English literature, and cause them to be fertile with "a life 
beyond life." 

Not long after that defeat which Edward III. endured in 
France, the hostility of England took the form of an Act of 
.Parliament (1362) for the discontinuance of the use of the 
French language in the pleadings and impleadings of the 
courts of law. There can be little doubt that Chaucer — if 
not as a courtier, at least as a poet, who had proven the 
scope, sufficiency, and capability of English for the utter- 
ance of the whole spirit of life — had considerable influence 



The Rush of Saxon Life. 169 

in effecting this enactment of that recently-instituted but 
essentially English body, the House of Commons. 

English was no more to be the patois of serfs, but the 
speech of freemen. Conquerors and conquered had now 
grdwn into one people. The sturdy Saxon had risen from 
the crush and pressure of foreign domination, and took 
with him, into the spheres of his activity everywhere, that 
rude mother-tongue, inflexible and rudely welded together 
as it was, in his ascent. The fine, quickening impulses of 
patriotism, the animation of martial enthusiasm, the far-fore- 
cast shadows of a Reformation, the pomp of chivalry, the 
grandeur of a mighty court, the intense activities of com- 
merce, the thronging might of a fresh and active lifehood, 
played in and upon the poet's heart with their mystic 
influences, and stirred its depths of thoughtfulness to effort 
and success. 

Chaucer rung out the great thoughts of his intellect in 
brave, bold, homely, hearty, vivid, vigorous words, — 

" And as much as then 
The English language could express for men, 
He made it do," — 

by following his own common-sense maxim, " Let us show 
our fantasyes in such wordes as we learneden of our dames' 
tongue." 

Chaucer's practice agreed with the policy of the king 
and the wishes of the people. He fused into one composite 
mass the courtier's French, the scholar's Latin, and the 
people's Saxon, and cast them into grace, beauty, and life- 
like reality, in his ingeniously conceptive mind. If the 
result is not unstainedly white and flawless, the gray lines 
and the spotty graining of the amalgam only serve to 
heighten our ideas of the genius which wrought into such 



1 70 Chaucer. 






harmoniousness elements so diverse and inaffinite. In hia 
hands English ceased to be a dialect, and became a speech. 
It was right that a mandate should go forth from Britain's 
highest councils, that the laws of England should cease to 
be appealed to or enforced in a tongue which had " become 
much unknown in the realm." We can fancy the delight 
with which he, 

1 ' Who first enriched our English with his rhymes, " 

would listen to the compliments of Petrarch upon this point 
of comparison between Dante, " the great poet of Itaille," 
and himself, viz., — his being the creator of the literary- 
language of his country. 

Chaucer's Genoese mission must have been managed to 
the king's satisfaction; for almost immediately after his 
return, he received a grant — 23d April 1374 — from his 
regal employer, of a pitcher of wine (about a gallon) daily ; 
and in June of the same year he was appointed, by royal 
patent, comptroller of the customs on wool, hides, &c, in 
the port of London. And that it might be expressly seen 
that this was not a "job" invented to provide a sinecure 
office for a needy, greedy hanger-on of courts, but a bond 
fide transaction, acknowledging and requiring business 
integrity, punctuality, and capacities, it is ordained " That 
the said Geoffrey Chaucer* write with his own hand 'his rolls 
touching the said office, and continually reside there, and 
do and execute all things pertaining to the said office, ii; 
his own proper person, and not by his substitute." Here 
we find it implied that there was some known quality in 
Chaucer which rendered this injunction needful — not for 
his discouragement, but for the maintenance of honest 
conduct in the public service. This very prohibition is an 



Learning and Leisure. 1 7 1 

attestation of the court's knowledge of Chaucer's literary 
labours, and the popularity of his writings. In 1375 
Edward III. conferred on him the wardenship of the heir 
of Sir Edraond Staplegate, with a salary (^104) equivalent 
to ^1872 per annum. The Duke of Lancaster endowed 
him with an annuity of (;£io) ^i8oj and in 1376 he got 
a grant of forfeited wool to the amount of ^1262 of the 
present currency (^71, 4s. 6d.) Of his "manner of life" 
at this period we get the following autobiographic glimpse 
from the "Book of Fame," (which dates about this time,) 
Book II., in which the living golden eagle says : — 

1 ' Thou wilt make 
O' nights full oft thine head to acke ; 
In thy study so thou y-writest 

That no tidings comen to thee, 

Not of thy very neighebores 
That dwellen almost at thy doors. 

For when thy labour all done is, 
And t'hast made all thy reckonings, 
Instead of rest and of new things, 
Thou goest home to thine house anon, 
And all so dumb as any stone, 
Thou sittest at another book, 
Till fully dazed is thy look." * 

* To this extract may be added the following, from the prologue to 
" The Legende of Gode Women," viz. : — 

" On bookes for to read I me delight, 
And to them give I faith and full credence; 
And in mine heart have them in reverence 
So heartily, that there is game none, 
That from my bookes maketh me to gone. " 

In the " Dutchesse," he says that reading is 
" Better play 
Than either at chess or tubbes." 



172 Chaucer. 

Chaucer and Froissart were fellow-yeomen of the court 
prior to 1368, w T hen the latter quitted England. From the 
French poet and chroniclist, the author of "The Flower 
and the Leaf" may have received the ground-thought of that 
poem in a description of the floral games instituted in 1324 
by Clementina Isaure, Countess of Toulouse. Chaucer, at 
any rate, alludes to a song of that quaint, garrulous old 
fellow's, in that poem, which was probably written about 
this time of learned and leisurely competence, when daily 
duty only gave zest to creative fancy. It is possible, how- 
ever, that Chaucer, in his continental embassies, may have 
been not merely a spectator of, but a sharer in, these 
affected and at that time fashionable sports. 

The diplomatic services of Chaucer were twice called 
into requisition in the early part of 1377, on secret affairs 
for his Majesty. We have it, on the authority of Froissart, 
that one of these missions — for which letters of protection 
were granted — was the negotiation of a treaty of marriage 
between Richard, Prince of Wales, and Mary, daughter of 
Charles V., King of France, (1364-1380.) The persons 
employed in this important embassy were Sir Guichard 
D' Angle, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon, Sir Richard Sturry, 
and Geoffrey Chaucer. The former were evidently the 
show ambassadors, and the untitled gentleman was as plainly 
the worker — the managing partner of the firm. During 
these absences, he appointed his fellow-poet, Gower, and 
one Richard Forrester, his legal representatives in matters 
of business. 

In this same year, (1377,) Edward III. died-at Richmond, 
June 2 1 st, and, though only in his eleventh year, Richard II., 
his grandchild, son of the Black Prince, who had died in 
the preceding year, succeeded him. A council of nine was 



The Dawn of Reformation. 173 

appointed to manage the affairs of the nation, but his uncles, 
the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, had the real 
direction of affairs in their hands. Chaucer's annuities and 
offices were confirmed to him by the new sovereign, and 
his services were again employed as a diplomatist in Lom- 
bardy in 1378. How long he was absent we cannot learn; 
but we do know that, during the three following years, 
England was in a strange religious and political ferment. 
By Wycliffe's advice, the Commons had refused to pay the 
papal toll called " Peters pence." Five bulls had been 
fulminated against the reformer ; and he had successfully 
resisted, by aid of Lancaster, Percy, and the Earl Marischal, 
one attempt to subdue him at an episcopal tribunal. Another 
attempt at coercive jurisdiction was quashed by the queen- 
mother in 1378. In 1379 he was stricken by paralysis, but 
he continued to toil on in the good work, and in 138 1 pub- 
lished twelve theses against the doctrines of the Church of 
Rome. Chaucer's patron, Lancaster, was Wycliffe's chief 
protector, and there can be no doubt that the poet ardently 
sympathised with the reformer.* We know that he used 

* Of this point the following may be regarded as the chief proots, 
viz. : — (1.) The general anti-Papal tendency and tone of Chaucer's 
poems. (2.) The story of his flogging a Franciscan friar in Fleet 
Street. (3.) The keen Wycliffism of .his patron. (4.) Cardinal Wolsey 
(1471-1530) interdicted the publication of "The Pilgrim's Tale," and 
objected to "The Ploughman's Tale." (5.) Fox, the martyrologist, 
(15 1 7-1587,) says, "I marvel to consider this, how that the bishops, 
condemning and abolishing all manner of English books and treatises 
which might bring the people to any light of knowledge, did yet 
authorise the works of Chaucer to remain. So it pleased God to blind 
then the eyes of them for the more commodity of the people." (6.) 
The prevalence of the opinion that the monks foisted a retractation of 
his " Enditings of Worldly Vanities" into the concluding paragraphs of 
"The Canterbury Tales " 



1 74 " Chaucer. 

his brilliantest weapon, ridicule, against the errors of the 
Church and its officials; and his noblest verses have been 
given to the description of a "Poore Parson"* — of which 
there was then only one illustrious living exemplar— 
Wycliffe himself, although the " poore priests," whose views 
accorded with his, were even then well and numerously 
scattered through the country. 

In the same year, 1381, the Saxons thought the time to 
" strike for freedom" had arrived, and under the leadership 
of Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw, an agitation for 
the abolition of serfdom and villenage, of imposts and tolls 
obstructive to commerce, and for the maintenance of the 
power of taxation among the Commons, was begun. Un- 
fortunately, the mob was turbulent, and the leaders were 
incapable of organising the insurgents effectually, or of 
restraining their excesses, so that the movement, justifiable 
in itself, was suppressed. It did, however, procure some 
ameliorations, and it indicated the power and energy of the 
peasant population. 

It is quite possible that Chaucer, as Comptroller of the 
Customs, and therefore personally, as well as officially, 
interested in the matter, may have been present at the 
conference in which the treacherous and lean-witted Wal- 
worth, with the argument of a sword's point, answered the 
complaints of Tyler, and left the mob leaderless, until the 
young king, emitting one spark of fellow-feeling, exclaimed, 
"Tyler was a traitor! — I myself will be your leader!" — a 
noble sentiment, the spirit of which was ignominiously 
evaded. 

" Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," had 

* To this portrait, Dry den, Goldsmith, Cowper, Crabbe, &c, have 
each been indebted. 



The Flow and Ebb of Fortune. 175 

married, in 1372, Constance, eldest daughter of Peter the 
Cruel, King of Castile and Leon, and had led an army into 
Spain to assert his right, through his wife, to the sovereignty 
of Castile; during his absence a contest arose between the 
court party and the commissioners of regency; and w r ary 
steps were required to keep free from danger and loss. 
Chaucer did not pass through the ordeal scathelessly. 

Richard II. had married, 1382, the daughter of the 
Emperor Charles IV., Anne of Bohemia. She, it has been 
conjectured, is complimented in the character of Alceste, 
the Queen of Love, the emblem of truth of womanhood, in 
" The Legende of Gode Women •" and it has hence been 
inferred that this poem was written at the suggestion of her 
Majesty; and in the Prologue the poet is commanded to 
present his composition to the Queen "at Eltham or at 
Shene." At any rate, we know that, four months after the 
royal marriage, Chaucer was made Comptroller of the minoi 
Customs of London, in addition to his former offices, and 
with the further privilege of performing his duties by deputy. 
He appointed a permanent substitute in 1383. 

Thus high went the flow of the tide ; the ebb began at 
last, however. In 1384 two candidates for the mayoralty 
of London were proposed, one by the officials of the court, 
headed by De la Pole and De Vere, another by the popular 
or Lancasterian party. John of Northampton was a Wy- 
cliffite, a man of integrity and ability, and under the patron- 
age of the Duke of Lancaster. Chaucer took his patron's 
side, and Lancaster's enemies included all his supporters in 
their list of malcontents. By the use of a military force, and 
after a city riot, Sir Nicholas Brember, the court candidate, 
was elected, and Northampton was imprisoned, tried, and 
(in August 1384) sentenced to perpetual imprisonment 



1 76 Chaucer. 

Chaucer fled first to Hainault, then to Zealand, taking his 
wife and children with him. Here " berafte out of dignity 
of office," in which he " made a gathering of worldly good," 
he spent some time in difficulties, and " with dangers com- 
passed round." On his return he was for a short time 
exposed to persecution ; and he complains, " For richesse 
have I povertie ; for dignitie now am I enprisoned; instede 
of power, wretchednesse I suffre ; and for glory of renown, 
I am now despised and foullie hated." In his durance he 
wrote that imitation of Boethius, entitled, " The Testament 
of Love." 

His humiliation, however, did not last long, for in 1386 
the men of Kent chose him as their representative in Parlia- 
ment, and as a knight of that shire he sat in Westminster. 
In 1387 he lost his wife, perhaps outworn with the priva- 
tions, the pinching pain of poverty, these years of woe neces- 
sitated; and in 1388 he was obliged to sell his annuities to 
one John Sealby. Gaunt returned to England in 1389, and 
at his instance Northampton was released, and Chaucer was 
repensioned, besides being appointed Clerk of the Works at 
Westminster, Windsor, &c, in which office he materially 
furthered the interests of architecture. In 1394 John of 
Lancaster honours or favours him with a pension, and he is 
still in receipt of his salary as one of the king's esquires, 
but of other offices he seems to have been deprived. About 
this period, however, he is believed to have been again 
settled in poetic retirement near Woodstock, the place of 
his manhood's early happiness, his dreams, ambitions, and 
endeavours. This is rendered all the more probable by 
the fact that his '•' Astrolabie," written for the education in 
astronomy of his favourite son, "litel Lowys," is com- 
pounded for the latitude of Oxford, and was, therefore, most 



Fatherly Love and Labours, 177 

probably written in the neighbourhood of that ancient seat 
of learning. The composition of this work for the special 
purpose assigned, seems to indicate the possession of learned 
leisure and homely competence, as well as fatherly interest, 
and the exercise of so many of the sweet domesticities of 
life as were possible to the widowed and work-worn poet. 
He is at this time again made a pensioner of the king to 
the amount of ^"20, equal to ^360 of our present currency 
— enough, in addition to other revenues, for comfort, if not 
for competency. This pleasing outgrowth of parental fond- 
ness, written in "lithe English," does not profess to be 
original. Its author says, "I ne assurpe not to have founden 
this werke of my labour or of mine engin. I am but a 
lewde compilatour of the laboure of old astrologiens, and 
have it translated into mine English onely for thy doctrine, 
and with this swerde shall I slay envie." It proves, how- 
ever, that he "was well grounded in astronomic" There are 
some kindly, fatherly phrases in the dedication which delight 
us much — e.g., " I perceive by certain evidences thyne 
abylyte to lerne scyences touching nombers and proportions, 
and also well consider thy besye prayer in especyal to lerne 
the tretyse of the astrolabye." He writes it in English, "for 
Latine ne canst thou not yet but small, my litel sonne. 
He prays "every person descrete that redeth or heareth 
this litel tretyse, to have my rude entending excused, and 
my superfluitie of wordes, for two causes. The first cause 
is for that curious endyting and harde sentences is full hevy 
at once for such a childe to lerne. And the second cause 
is this, that soothely me seemeth better to written unto a 
child twise a good sentence, than he forget it once." These 
thoughts, this delicate considerateness, throb out of a fine 
fatherliness of heart, and from a clear, well-furnished under- 



178 Chaucer. 

standing. Sixty-three years of busy life had not cooled his 
sympathy with boyhood, and even the pet little prodigy 
which his wife had left him as a legacy of love, is sensibly 
though kindly dealt with. There was sunshine in the old 
man's soul. 

We do not know that it has been before remarked that 
the works of Chaucer, prior to the issue of "The Testament 
of Love," are courtly, debonnaire, fretted with fantastic fancies 
relative to chivalric customs, and generally, in spirit, style, 
portraiture, taste, and machinery, refer to and embody the 
graces, habits, and finicalities of life among the upper grades 
of society; but now, when leisure lay before him to make 
his grand adventure for fame, he turned himself from the 
circles of vague punctilio, bienseance, and noble gentility, to 
the whole breadth of life as it was in his age, and then in 

• * Legends blithe 
He sang of love or knighthood, or the wiles 
Of homely life; through each estate and age 
The fashions and the follies of the world 
With cunning hand portraying " — 

with all the spirit, zest, humour, facile changefulness, and 
descriptive skill in picturing the motleyness of custom and 
costume which then prevailed, of one who " in the original 
perused mankind." 

From Gower's mention of Chaucer's work, " The Testa- 
ment of Love," in the " Confessio Amantis," published in 
1393, and his speaking of him as being "in his dayes olde," 
it has been generally inferred that "The Canterbury Tales " 
were commenced about this date, and were not included in 
those "dytyes and songes" of his with which, at this time, 
Gower says — 

"The land fulfilled is over all." 



"The Canterbury Tales? 179 

This, we believe, is a rather hasty conjecture, not supported 
by fact, and scarcely supportable by inference. For instance, 
in "The Legend of Good Women," (1382,) we find it 
asserted that 

" He made the boke that highte c the House of Fame,' 
Eke * the Deathe of Blanche, the Duchesse,' 
And ' the Parliament of Foules,' as I guess, 
And all * the Love of Palamon and ArciteJ 
Of Thebes, though the story is knowen lite, 
And many an hymne. " 

Now, " Palamon and Arcite," the Iliad of English literature, 
(the original of which seems to have been derived both from 
Statius and Boccaccio,) is the topic of "The Knight's Tale," 
the first of the series; it occupies no fewer than 2239 lines, 
and we have no other work of Chaucer's in which it appears. 
It seems far more natural, therefore, to suppose that the 
plan had been gradually built up in his mind from the sug- 
gestion afforded by Boccaccio's "Decameron," (1350,) and 
that he interlaced in the grand web of his thoughts many of 
those precious threads of narrative which had been circulat- 
ing for years among his friends and fellows of the court. 
That, however, the series had not attained its present form, 
prior to 1393, is perhaps true; for in "The Man of Law's 
Tale," after giving an index rerum of his " Legend," he takes 
up the story " Of thilke wicke ensample of Canace " from 
the work of Gower, of which we have spoken. On this 
supposition we have only to regard the prologue and the 
jokes and conversations which so dramatically occupy the 
spaces between the tales as necessarily new, though we may 
acknowledge it as highly probable that, prompted by the 
exigencies of the plot, he may have added many touches to 
the old poems, and added several fresh, though winter- 



r 8o Chaucer. 



he 



flowered, products of constructive fancy to the garland 
was engaged in arranging. This inference seems to be 
borne out by the fact, that the prologue is the most finished, 
most delicately and characteristically managed, the broadest 
in outline, freest in pencilling, and most minute in deline- 
ativeness of the whole poem, and that the keeping of the 
several members of the singular and varied pilgrimage are 
Shakesperian in distinctness of characterisation and sustained 
representativeness. It is too much to suppose that such 
vastness of design and variety of executive skill, as well as 
voluminousness of invention, could have been crowded into 
the seven closing years of the venerable bard, whose life 
and mind had been so active in youth and manhood, and 
who bore the lines of nearly half a century of authorship 
carved into his broad and thoughtful brow. We incline to 
believe, then, that with an author's cherishing love for the 
offspring of his thoughts, he gathered together all the 
" storial thing " of his bygone and unarranged authorship 
into one , liberal offertory for posterity. The prologue is 
immeasurably superior in taste, humour, interest, probability, 
feeling, and vraisemblance to that of its prototype, "The 
Decameron :" the plot is better sustained throughout; there 
is greater congruity between the narrations and the nar- 
rators; the colouring and types of life are more varied; the 
classes, company, and individuals are better specialised; and 
the whole plan is more happily and more artistically con- 
ceived. The general form is copied, but the characters, 
scenery, management, interest, sentiment, style, dramatic 
pictoriality, and satiric bonhomie are all original; the glow 
of personality, life, sociality, station, and spirit — in one 
word, Englishness — is upon them all, and the 



Character of the English Language. 1 8 1 

11 Nine and twenty in a compagnie 
Of sondrie folk by aventure y-fall 
In fellowship, " 

in the Tabard, at Southwark, are brought before the reader 
in the palpable reality of health, strength, and truth. 

"Legends blithe 
He sang of love or knighthood, or the wiles 
Of homely life; through each estate and age 
The fashions and the follies of the world 
With cunning hand portraying." 

No exhaustive criticism of Chaucer's intensely picturesque 
and vividly individualised poems can be undertaken in an 
interpretative life-sketch such as this, in which it is chiefly 
intended to indicate or suggest the special characteristics 
which the man displayed ; in his age, and the peculiar in- 
fluence he brought into such forceful activity, as to have 
affected his own era, and to have impressed the future with 
it. The chief aim of Chaucer's life we signalise in his 
definite and persistent culture of the English tongue. How 
great must be our debt to the first master-spirit who poured 
the life of his soul into English with such sincerity, con- 
tinuousness, straightforwardness, transparency, volubility, 
earnest thought, and copious versatility. It was right that 
the crowning work of his active life should be one in which 
the capacities of the language should be tested to the 
utmost by the width, scope, variousness, and multiplicity of 
the matters brought into the harmonies of verse, and so be 
proved to be wanting in nothing that pertained to the 
genuine life of his nation. The flux and uncertainty, the 
fitful literary usage of our speech was at once terminated by 
its being shown that profound learning, chivalric fantasy, 
true womanliness, perfect gentility, civic needs, and homely 



1 82 Chaucer. 

wants, could all find expression in a national language 
formed, like the people who spoke it, out of the prime 
materials that all other nationalities could furnish, worked, 
kneaded, vitalised by something more than even Promethean 
heat — the breath of the soul of genius. 

Through the changeful vicissitudes of a changeful time, 
Chaucer held consistently to the political and religious views 
of his mature manhood, and kept faith with his earliest 
patron, John of Gaunt. During a number of years this 
nobleman had held the affections of Chaucer's sister-in- 
law, the widow of Sir Hugh de Swineford — who had been 
governess to the daughters of the Duchess Blanche — in 
thrall. That he really loved her, though unlawfully for 
some time, for she had borne him three sons and a daughter, 
was shown by his taking her to wife in January 1396; by 
acknowledging her children; and by his securing their 
legitimisation by Act of Parliament in the following year : 
at which period Lancaster had recovered his influence both 
with king and people. Chaucer was thus more closely allied 
to the Lancasterian party, and was more likely to have 
such influence as it possessed for the advancement of the 
interest of himself and his children. In accordance with 
these natural inferences, we find several antiquaries record- 
ing a tradition that he resided in Donnington Castle, Berk- 
shire, during the latter years of his life ; and Mr Grose, on 
the authority of a MS. in the Cotton Library, asserts that 
he was the purchaser. Perhaps the expense of this "romance 
in stone and lime" hampered his means, or excited the 
envious hatred of his enemies — persons whom successful 
merit seldom wants. At any rate, we find that in 1398 he 
received a grant of the king's protection from arrest and 
prosecution fox two years, as one engaged on urgent busi- 



Old Age and Death. 1 83 

ness for his Majesty. In 1399^00, he got a grant of a pipe 
of wine annually " in the port of London, from the king's 
chief butler or his deputy." Thomas Chaucer, the poet's 
eldest son, was at this time chief butler to the king. On 
3d February 1399, John of Gaunt died, and Richard II. 
appropriated his estates. Henry Bolingbroke, the young 
duke, then in exile, determined to resist the confiscation, 
and during the absence of the king in Ireland landed at 
Ravenspur, in Yorkshire. He seized Richard on his return, 
carried him captive to London, and extorted an abdication 
on a charge of misgovernment and breach of constitutional 
right. On Richard's deposition, September 29, 1399, he 
claimed to be (and was) crowned, Oct. 13th. One of the 
earliest acts of the young king was to confirm the grants of 
annuity and wine to our poet, and to add (as a solatium for 
the losses sustained by Lancaster's death?) an additional 
annuity of forty marks. On 24th Dec. 1399, Chaucer took 
a long lease of a house in Westminster, in the garden of the 
old convent, on which the chapel of Henry VII, is now 
built, from the Abbot, named Robert Humodesworth, and 
there he appears to have resided till his death, Oct 15, 
1400. 

If we believe what Shakespeare makes Chaucer's patron 
say, that 

"The tongues of dying men 
Enforce attention like deep harmony : 
Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain : 
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. 
He that no more must say, is listen'd to more 
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose. 
More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before." 

How much ought we to value the " Gode Council of 
Chaucer/' written on his death-bed, when that solemn hour 



1 84 Chaucer. 






had come, in which resignation and composure are most 
required, and the light of heaven enters the soul through 
the chinks disease has made ! These are the sober, sen- 
sible, impressive, but not sombre, thoughts which he left as 
a parting legacy to his posterity, to us, and ours : — 

" Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness, 
Suffice unto thy good though it be small; 
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness, 
Press hath envy, and weal is blent o'er all ; 
Savour no more than thee behoven shall; 
Rede well thyself, that other folk canst rede, 
And Truth thee shall deliver 'tis no drede. 

" Pain thee not each crooked to redress 
In trust of her that turneth as a ball ; 
Great rest standeth in little business ; 
Beware also to spurn against a nalle : 
Strive not as doth a crooke with a wall ; , 
Deem thou thyself that deem'st others' deed, 
And Truth thee shall deliver 'tis no drede. 

" That thee is sent receive in buxomness ; 
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall ; 
Here is no home, here is but wilderness ; 
Forth, pilgrim, forth, O beast out of thy stall ; 
Look up on high, and thank thy God for all ; 
Waive thou thy lust, and let thy ghost thee lead, 
And Truth thee shall deliver 'tis no drede." 

He was the first of the "sovereigns of intellect" who 
tenanted the south transept of Westminster Abbey, since 
fittingly named Poets' Corner. Caxton, the earliest English 
printer, erected a monument over the resting-place of the 
first English poet, to 

"Protect his memory, and preserve his story." 

Thomas Chaucer, his son, held many honourable offices, 
and was highly successful as a diplomatist ; his daughter, 



Genius, Reputation, and Influence. 185 

Elizabeth, became a nun in the Priory of St Helen's, 
London; but of the fondling, "litel Lowys," we have no 
history. It is to be feared he was too precocious, and faded 
early, and that his virtue, worth, and sweetness were not 
long held back, after his father's death, from the dull grave 
that hushes all — " the fairest oft the fleetest." 

Life's mutations, great and many though they were — 
student, lawyer, courtier, soldier, prisoner, ambassador, 
financier, exile, the friend of princes and kings, the com- 
panion of noble, patriot, and reformer, but above and ex- 
celling all, the poet — came to an end. A fadeless glory is 
round his memory, and his words, like the soul they issued 
from, are immortal. Imagination, humour, satire, sagacious 
observativeness, the very ethereal essence of sociality and 
song, were in him. The freshness of a May morning is over 
all his works. They are prolific 

" Of more proverbs 
Than in this world there growen grass or. herbs." 

The learning in them is deep, wide, and masterly. They 
are quaint, naive, and (if rightly read) musical. They are full 
of the thought-life of a true man and Englishman, and they 
are the " heirs of the invention" of the father of the language 
of " nobleness and chivalrie '%— the strongest, richest, most 
elegant and valuable of the languages of men. 

Chaucer was the " antecessor" of a noble race ; "the line 
of English poets begins with him, as that of English kings 
with William the Conqueror ; and if the change introduced 
by him was not so great, his title is better. Kings there 
were before the Conquest, and of great and glorious memory 
too. But the poets before Chaucer are like the heroes 
before Agamemnon ; even of those whose works have 



1 86 . Chancer. 

escaped oblivion, the names of most have perished." It has 
not been so with 

" Him who left half told 

The story of Cambuscaa bold, 

Of Cambull and of Algarsife ; 

And who had Canace to wife; 

That own'd the wondrous ring and glass ; 

And of the wondrous horse of brass 

On which the Tartar king did ride." 

The preservative magic of genius more effectively than the 
conservative consecration of sovereignty, has made us the 
inheritors of 

" Him who first with harmony inform'd 
The language of our fathers. . . . Who in times 
Dark and untaught, began with charming verse 
To tame the rudeness of his native land." 

May we be worthy of the gift of this great and good 
illustrator of life and literature ! 




Copernicus — Modern Astronomy. 

A.D. I473- 1 543. 



ft O best endowed and bravest Pole of Poles ! 
Stupendous was thine insight into things; 
And things celestial too ; though stars not souls? 
Thine more than any man's the skill that brings 
The Truth that is from out the Truth that seems. 
How free thy will, how plastical thy mind, 
With love -like bands of light the sun to bind — 
A wandering joy till then in all our dreams ! — 
But bind in honour as a king is bound, 
By holy law, to bless, sustain, and rule. 
No wonder thou wert crush'd instead of crown' d ; 
The Church was frighten' d, and abash'd the school. 
Oh for another error-quelling Mars, 
To range the world of souls as well as stars ! " 

— Samuel Brown, 1852. 



" Copernicus, vir maximo ingenio, et quod in hoc exercitio magni 
momenti est, animo liber." — Kepler. 



" The great Columbus of the heavens." — Edward Everett. 



"This Copernicus has done much more than he thought of." — 
Hobbes. 



COPERNICUS— MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



^^|0 those who are acquainted with the grandeur and 
pimiG sweep of modern astronomical speculation, the 
P*JrSgll sublime results of the far-stretching explorations 
into the vast indefmitudes of space, which its cultivators 
have accumulated and arranged, and the mightiness of the 
masses and epochs regarding which the astronomer gives us 
information, it cannot but be interesting to know something 
of the " life and times " of that man by whom the central 
thought of modern astronomy was initiated ; while to those 
who have hitherto contented themselves with a faith in, 
rather than a knowledge of, the facts of this science it may 
be not useful only, but pleasing, to be taken to the centre- 
thought from which all these facts out-radiate, that they may 
trace out hereafter, with greater ease, in the subsequent de- 
velopments and progress of the science, the influences set 
a-working by the genius of that illustrious Pole, who "nature's 
mystic lore and language " knew so well. 

Nicholas Copernicus was born near the old gate in Thorn, 
(Torunia,) a town on the right bank of the Vistula, in the 
Palatinate of Masovia, in the ancient kingdom of Poland, 
19th February, 1473. ^ n consequence of the name of the 
great astronomer's grandfather being found in the register of 
persons admitted to the privileges of citizenship in Cracow, 



190 Copernicus. 

in 1396, under the Bohemian form Koppernig, it has been 
generally assumed that his paternal ancestors were Boii. The 
father of Copernicus, who was a surgeon, came from Cracow, 
and settled in Thorn in 1462. Three years afterwards, he 
had risen so much in popular estimation that he was elected 
a member of the council of the town of his adoption. This 
sufficiently defines his position in society to account for his 
marriage with Barbara Watzelrod, a native of Thorn, a lady 
connected by birth with the nobility of Poland. Copernicus 
received his early education at home, and in the public 
gymnasium or grammar school, founded 1350, of his native 
place. He had the reputation, even in his youth, of being 
"a scholar, and a ripe and good one." His father died 
shortly after Copernicus had completed his tenth )^ear, and 
the bereaved mother placed the direction of his studies in 
the hands of her brother, Lucas Watzelrod, Bishop of Erme- 
land (Warmia.) It was decided that the youth should follow 
his father's profession; so, after having advanced his elemen- 
tary studies sufficiently at Thorn, he was entered as a student 
of medicine in 149 1, in the then far-famed University of 
Cracow, founded 1364 by Casimir the Great. Here he 
studied classics, medicine, and philosophy. He was here 
placed under the private as well as the public instructions 
of the celebrated Albert Brudzewski, afterwards tutor to 
Alexander, King of Poland. The influence of such a teacher 
on the mind of a pupil, both by inclination and interest apt 
in study, could not but have been considerable. Brudzewski 
was equally distinguished for his attainments in Greek 
scholarship, his mathematical skill, and his astronomical re- 
searches. He was the author of a work on the mathematics 
of astronomy, which became, and long continued to be, a 
text-book throughout Europe. For some time the rival in 



Home and Foreign Education. 1 9 1 

reputation of Purbach and Regiomontanus, he had now be- 
come their successor. Under such a teacher Copernicus 
was initiated into the mysteries of the astronomy of that age, 
and made acquainted with the uses of the astrolabe — the 
instrument then employed in making observations on the 
stars. 

The University of Cracow was at this time also world- 
famous for the publication of an annual almanac, the pre- 
paration of which was a task imposed on the mathematical 
professor of that university on his appointment. That the 
professors might have every facility afforded them for the 
proper performance of this important duty, the university 
collected, at great expense and trouble, all the Efihemeiides 
Astronomicce, or almanacs, then published, so that it was well 
furnished, for the time, with the conditions of successful 
astronomical study. We cannot doubt that Copernicus 
took due advantage of his opportunities, and that besides 
making himself well acquainted with the usual branches of 
a university curriculum, he had acquired a permanent taste, 
if not a decided thirst, for knowledge. A special interest, 
however, seems to have been excited in him for astronomical 
investigations. 

To gratify his intense desire for improvement, Corpernicus 
left Poland, to visit the chief foreign seats of learning. In 
1495, he entered the University of Padua, then one of the 
most flourishing educational institutions in southern Europe, 
as a student of the faculty of medicine. Here he studied 
the peripatetic philosophy and medicine under Passaro and 
Teatinus, varying his life by spending his vacations at 
Bologna, in companionship with Dominico Maria, the most 
celebrated Italian mathematician of his age, with whom con- 
geniality of taste and studies had made him an intimate 



192 Copernicus. 

friend. In 1499, Copernicus graduated in Padua as doctor 
both of philosophy and medicine, the ceremony, as was then 
usual, taking place in the magnificent cathedral of that city. 

In the following year, on the recommendation of his 
friend Dominico Maria, Corpernicus was appointed pro- 
fessor of mathematics in Rome. His reputation had pre- 
ceded him thither, and he began to expound his favourite 
science, as well as continued to pursue his astronomical in- 
vestigations, under the most favourable auspices. A crowd 
of scholars, artists, and other eminent men, attended his 
lectures ; great applause greeted his steps ; he was declared 
to be nothing inferior to Regiomontanus ; and triumph 
seemed to swell his sails. He had not long occupied this 
notable position, till the novelty of his doctrines, no less than 
the greatness of his fame, excited jealousy. The deplorable 
government of Rome, under Pope Alexander VI., was not 
of such a kind as to satisfy a Polish scholar. He resigned 
his professorship in 1502, and returned to Cracow, with the 
halo of fame on his brow, and the sting of envy in his heel. 

During eight years — the eight years in which the Augus- 
tan age of Polish literature brightened towards its dawn, 
under the wisest, bravest, and most magnanimous of Po- 
land's kings, Sigismund I. — Copernicus dwelt contentedly 
in Cracow. He went little into company, was grave and 
serious in manner and speech, delighted in quiet, learned, 
earnest conversation, and was diligent in keeping up a 
widely diffused correspondence with the first men of the 
age. His tendency towards unusual and original specula- 
tion had developed itself early; the calm daring of his 
thoughts had won him many admirers ; and hence an inti- 
macy with him was much sought after and highly valued. 
Large masses of his epistles to the eminent scientific and 



Astronomy and Theology. 193 

literary men of his time are still, we believe, to be found 
among the MS. collections in the library of the University 
of Cracow. 

Copernicus was a man, not only of extensive erudition in 
the science by which his distinction was gained, but also 
profoundly thoughtful and extremely cautious in observation 
and experiment. By the use of the Cracovian Ephemerides y 
and several instruments constructed by himself, he had 
diligently noted the positions of the stars, and compared 
them with the places assigned them in the systems of anti- 
quity, till the multiplicity of discrepancies observed between 
the theoretic and the real led him first to a doubt, and 
afterwards to a disbelief, of the received canons of astro- 
nomy. The date usually given, as that in which this disbelief 
transformed itself into a new and definite theory, is 1507. 
We see no reason for doubting this chronological statement, 
although we know of no positive proof for the fixing of the 
date. This, however, we may infer, that his devotion to 
scientific pursuits must have impaired what resources may 
have been left him by his father, have precluded him from 
acquiring sufficient means of living from tutorial pursuits or 
the practice of surgery, and have made him anxious to find 
some position wherein the earnestness of study might be 
made compatible with " a competent portion of the good 
things of this life." The example of his friends Konarski 
and Zaremba, as well as the advice of his uncle, doubtlessly 
led him to think of the Church. He took holy orders, was 
consecrated a priest in Cracow, and was created Canon of 
Frauenburg, in the diocese of Ermeland, of which Lucas 
Watzelrod, his uncle, was the bishop. At first, however, 
the change did not seem to be very advantageous, so far as 
regarded the furtherance of those investigations which he 



194 Copernicus. 

was desirous of engaging in, regarding the "jewellery 
of heaven." His uncle being much engaged at the court, 
the management of the business affairs of the bishopric 
was confided to the care of Copernicus. The administra- 
tive capacity required for the successful accomplishment of 
these in the then state of the diocese was of no mean order. 
Nevertheless, he manifested all the qualities of a consum- 
mate adept in business, even while he pursued in private 
the quiet and " even tenor" of scholarly research. 

The business difficulties in which Copernicus suddenly 
found himself immersed arose in this wise. In 1225, the 
Teutonic knights having returned from Palestine to a retire- 
ment in Venice, had been invited to convert Masovia to 
Christianity. As a condition of, as well as a reward for, the 
accomplishment of this desirable end, they had received a 
grant of land. They succeeded, by the most horrid tyranny, 
in reducing the inhabitants of that district to a nominal 
recognition of Jesus, but a real subjugation to themselves. 
Not contented with the territory with which their order had 
' been endowed, they stretched out their conquests and 
oppressive domination greatly beyond their prescribed 
limits. Tyranny invariably produces revolt. Resistance 
was determined on, and hostilities, at first desultory, but 
latterly combined, were commenced. The exigence at 
length grew so alarming, that a convention was held, in 
1454, in the native town of Copernicus, to devise and carry 
out such means as seemed likely to be successful in enabling 
the people to throw of! the tyrannous yoke with which they 
were enthralled by those knightly despots. In 1466, by a 
treaty of renunciation signed at Thorn, the movement was 
ostensibly finished by the vanquishment of the Teutonic 
usurpers. This victory was more seeming than real, how* 



Divinity and the Drama. 195 

ever ; for the oppressors substituted guile for force, and by 
stealthy and insidious encroachments on their neighbours 
were rapidly regaining a complete though unapparent tri- 
umph. They had begun to exercise their sly rapacity in 
the diocese of Ermeland; and Copernicus, with all the 
enthusiasm of a citizen of the town in which their defeat 
had been determined on and sealed, set himself to cross 
their designs, resist their machinations, and render their 
efforts effectless. Bribes, menaces, and entreaties were all 
vainly employed to move his firm and resolute will. Coper- 
nicus conquered ; and the vanquished knights, with pitiable 
malice, called in the aid of some obscure plagiarist from 
Aristophanes to introduce him, Socrates-like, as one of the 
dramatis persona of a comedy performed at Elbing, another 
town which they had founded. Amid the buffoonery of 
this comedy a burlesque of his astronomical theories was 
presented, and the mob was excited to hissing, hooting, and 
wonder at the priestly wiseacre who could, in opposition to 
the plain teaching of his own eyes, suppose that the earth 
moved round the sun.* The pleading of Copernicus against 

* The following rfozimt of the plot of this piece may not be unin- 
teresting : — The stage exhibits the interior of an astronomer's study, 
furnished with many ridiculous instruments ; in the centre stands an 
old man, a burlesque representation, in appearance . and dress, of 
Copernicus. Behind him is Satan, and by his side a clown. Coperni- 
cus devotes himself to the Prince of Darkness, burns a Bible, and — 
more heinous still — tramples upon a crucifix. With resin torches the 
face of the astronomer is lighted up to represent the sun, whilst he 
juggles several apples round his ruddy face, in imitation of the revolv- 
ing planets, after which he vends quack medicine and pomatum, and 
the farce closes, amidst blue, green, and crimson lights, — melo- 
drama's darlings, — by Satan seizing him, to drag him to a region 
underlying human graves, whence issue belching, sulphurous flames, 
declaring all the while that he would hang him head downmost during 



ig& Copernicus. 

the recording of a final judgment on such evidence, before 
such a jury, was pithy and concise — " ' Mathematica mathe- 
maticis scribuntur"— mathematics are written for mathemati- 
cians. His appeal has been successful, judgment has been 
reversed, the satire and the science of the Teutonic knights 
are now alike objects of contempt, while the name and fame 
of Copernicus are brightened with the progress of the suns. 
Though the Court had, by a royal decree, compelled the 
restitution of the usurped estates, the contention between 
the Canon of Frauenburg and the warlike missionaries of 
the cross was not yet fully ended ; for when it became 
known that at a diet to be held at Graudentz, in 15 21, the 
subject of the debasement of the coin of the realm, 
which had been extensively and systematically practised by 
the knights, was to be taken into serious consideration, 
Copernicus was chosen nuncio for the diocese of Ermeland, 
and made earnest and valuable efforts for the correction of 
this heinous political and moral crime. The definitive 
settlement of this question being encumbered with many 
difficulties, — amongst others, the infringement of rights 
acquired by several towns, e.g., Dantzig and Elbing, to coin 
their own money, — the consideration of the suoject was 
postponed till a future diet. Copernicus has left behind 
him evidences of his interest in this matter in the tables 
which he constructed to show the mode in which the 
current coin of Poland, Prussia, and Lithuania might be 
reduced to a common and uniform, yet standard issue. 

eternity, for having ventured to disturb the settled earth. The humour 
is made more telling by the appendix of asses' ears to his caput, the 
jokes of the merry -andrew, and the wondrous vision of the gateway of 
the place of Fate, which blazed so triumphantly for the reception of the 
destruction-deserving priest. 



Reform of the Cale7tdar. jgy 

The incident of the Elbing comedy sufficiently shows 
that the views which Copernicus entertained regarding the 
solar system were somewhat widely known. Another cir- 
cumstance still more signally proves that, though his opinions 
were, as yet, formally unpublished, they were very far from 
being either unknown or unnoticed. When the reform of 
the Calendar was agitated in the Church, Bishop Paul, of 
Middleburg, the president of the special congregation con- 
vened for the consideration of that subject, besought, by an 
autograph letter, the co-operation and assistance of Coper- 
nicus. To this subject the attention of the Canon of 
Frauenburg had been given from the time that Pope Leo X. 
(15 13-1522) had first mooted the question. He had early 
arrived at the conclusion that the chief cause of the failure 
of any scheme for effecting such a purpose lay in the inade- 
quacy, if not the absolute erroneousness, of the results 
obtained by the labours of former astronomers, " as regards 
the length of years and months, on the one hand, and the 
relative movements of the sun and the moon on the other." 
To investigations upon these matters he accordingly devoted 
himself. When, therefore, Bishop Paul solicited his aid, he 
was not only willing, but specially fitted to give good help ; 
and he did not refuse compliance, but wrote a treatise on 
the fixing of the exact length of the year, which was laid 
before the congregation, and was undoubtedly employed in 
the .ultimate decision of that long-debated point. This is 
clearly proven by the authority of Christopher Clavius, the 
person appointed by Gregory XIII. to superintend the 
reformation, finally accomplished in October 1582, who, in 
his work "On the Calendar," says that "Nicholas Coper- 
nicus, an illustrious mathematician of our age, by a most 
diligent comparison of his own observations with those of 



198 Copernicus. 

Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Albategnius, and the Alphonsine 
tables, has ventured, by an incredibly healthy shrewdness, 
new hypotheses being attached thereto, to demonstrate this 
increase and decrease of the solar year, and to reduce the 
inequalities of the year to a certain and definite law ; and 
has discovered, by a calculus derived from his hypotheses, 
that the solar year, when it has increased to its greatest 
extent, is a little greater than that which Ptolemy calculated, 
viz., 365^ 5k 55' 57" 40'", but that when it has decreased to 
the utmost, it is a little less than Albategnius found it, viz., 
365 d o h - 4' 55" 7'"; so that the medium magnitude of the 
Alphonsine year is somewhat nearly an average between the 
longest and the shortest duration." 

The above quotation proves satisfactorily that although 
Copernicus did not live to see his opinions adopted, they 
were yet allowed silently to operate in the production of 
important changes, and that though the efficient promoters 
of the Gregorian calendar cautiously abstained from assent- 
ing to the peculiar hypotheses implied in his suggestions, 
they made such use of his labours as bore real testimony 
to their value, virtual testimony to their truth. 

Strange, that at this very time Providence should have 
raised up two men in Europe whose genius should be sub- 
versive of the past, and potent to upbuild the new — Luther 
and Copernicus — the one the reformer of the theology, the 
other of the science of the age ! Strange, that in this era 
there should be two protests, entered simultaneously, from 
opposite hemispheres of thought, against the domination of 
authority ! Stranger still, that those two men, working 
towards the same end, — the emancipation of the human 
soul from the trammels of a bigoted conservatism, — should 
have had no brotherly sympathies, no links of communion ; 



Science and Theology. 199 

that they seem to have risen up unrecognised by each other 
as "fellow-helpers ;" and that each, absorbed in the work- 
ing out of his own purpose, was shut out by the very energy 
and concentrativeness requisite to the accomplishment of 
that from sympathy with his co-labourer in the enfranchise- 
ment of thought ! Yet so it was ; and these twin-born 
children of progress pursued each his own way, unwitting 
that in the grand drama of history they were bringing about 
the wonderful denouement of modern civilisation. 

The pathway to the attainment of true science was blocked 
up by the dogmas handed down, sanctioned, and authori- 
tatively decided by the Church, and the " true and living 
way " of access to a theology, potent over the whole faculties 
of the human soul, had long exhibited a placard, whereon 
was inscribed the fatal words, " No thoroughfare ! Tres- 
passers will be prosecuted." But the ocean yielded up to 
Columbus a new world ; the mechanism by which thought 
becomes winged was discovered \ the idea of nationality had 
been evoked \ Luther opened the Bible, and Copernicus un- 
riddled the mysteries of the sky, notwithstanding the pro- 
hibition which the papal hierarchy had issued against change 
and progress. The dominion of the senses, and the tyranny 
of tradition, had both been resisted, and the freedom of the 
human understanding had been proclaimed as the necessary 
condition of truth, holiness, and civilisation. The calmly 
studious life of the great astronomer has been somewhat 
overlooked in the noise of the polemics of the great re- 
former \ yet there is a heroism in the silent, though laborious 
toilsomeness of a student's life not undeserving of its reward, 
not effectless in human history, not forgotten of God, though 
frequently disregarded by man. 

We have noticed some events in the life of Copernicus, 



200 Copernicus. 






which have carried us beyond the period at which his 
theory of the planetary system had been elaborated, and, in 
some measure, made known to his contemporaries. Alone 
on the outposts of scientific conquest ; undesparingly ten- 
anting the solitary sentinel-house, erected on the utmost 
verge to which intimidated inquiry had ventured to extend 
her power ; self-concentred and self-upheld, although un~ 
cheered by sympathy of thought or companionship in study, 
with the noble heroism of patient labour, he has been 
engaged in waging an uncompromising warfare with doubt, 
error, difficulty, and distance ; and he now brings with him 
the fruits of his victory, and the trophies of his conquests. 
Let us now turn our attention to the modes and processes 
by which, overstepping the wonted boundaries of human 
thought, he substantiated a new and true explanation of the 
majestic and slowly-evolving phenomena of the far-off firma- 
ment. To effect this, we must turn back the pages of the 
histoiy of science, and retroject our thoughts far into the 
distance of former centuries, when experimental philosophy 
scarcely existed, and authority had closed the doors of 
further investigation. In going from the light into the 
darkness there is little chance of acquiring distinctness of 
vision. Let us rather voluntarily shut our eyes to the light 
which the after centuries reveal, until we are able to turn 
our faces towards the light thereof, and find some use for 
the illumination which it can throw back upon the past. 

Early in the history of our race the stars had attracted 
the loving watchfulness of thoughtful men. They gazed on 
them long and patiently as they sparkled in the intense blue 
of an Oriental sky. They had grouped them into constel- 
lations, traced their pathways, calculated their wanderings? 
and determined the periods in which their journeys were 



The Progress of Science. 2 o 1 

performed. The phases of " the two great lights " had been 
so scanned and studied, that their slowest changes were 
marked, known, and registered. Almost all the facts ascer- 
tainable by mere inspection had been placed in the treasuries 
of science. Intellect, however, had not yet overleaped the 
barriers of sensation, and secured a pathway to higher truths 
than sense gives. Hence every effort made to explain the 
phenomena of the stars accepted as real and true that which 
was only apparent. The Greeks expended their grandly 
theoretic intellects upon the scientific construction of astro- 
nomy, and brought into being a multitude of hypotheses, 
according to which the mystic motions of the heavenly 
bodies might be explained. These could not then be sub- 
jected to any decisive test, but continued to retain the fas- 
cination, as well as the indefiniteness, of dreams. Hippar- 
chus saw this deficiency, and endeavoured to supply it, by 
the institution of continuous, accurate, and constant obser- 
vation. Following his example, Ptolemy closely examined 
facts, and patiently pursued his researches into the secrets 
of the motions of the orbs of heaven. At length, having 
accumulated observations, he began to theorise, and, for a 
time, by a most ingeniously-devised system of cycles and 
epicycles, satisfactorily accounted for the phenomena of the 
planetary motions. This system was recognised as true, 
enjoyed the popularity of centuries, and eventually became 
so tenaciously engrafted upon human thought, as to defy, 
apparently for ever, any attempt at extirpation. Some few 
rude remonstrances had been made, some concessions had 
been granted, some trivial innovations had been introduced, 
but in all its essentials the Ptolemaic system was that which 
universally prevailed when Copernicus devoted himself to 
the emancipation of science from the fetters of authority, and 



202 Copernicus. 

the limitations of the single sense through which astrono- 
mical phenomena become knowable. 

Copernicus was well read in all that related to the doc- 
trines of astronomy, a profound student, a bold thinker, a 
patient investigator, an ingenious contriver of experiments, 
and a truly pious man. During thirty years he observed the 
varied processions of the heavenly bodies, compared their 
positions with those resulting from the Ptolemaic theory, 
which showed — 

"The sphere, 
With centric and acentric scribbled o'er 
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb ; " 

computated their distances, motions, and relations, in the 
hope of reconciling the complexity of the whole with some 
simple idea, such as seemed worthy of the God of the 
creation. The effort was vain. Each new experiment 
showed only the superlative degree of intricate disorder. 
There seemed no hope, unless he took " a new departure," 
changed his tact, and thus corrected the faulty reckoning of 
those voyagers into the ocean of space who had preceded 
him in the attempt to reach scientific truth. 

Another hypothesis having become necessary, Copernicus 
began to think over the various suggestions which had been 
thrown out by the ancients for the explanation of the ap- 
pearances which the sky presented to the sight. He 
remembered that Pythagoras had supposed that the grand 
central fire of the universe — the sun — was stationary, and 
that the planets revolved in order and harmony round that 
brilliant mass. Could this guess be the key to the truth 1 
Thought might catch the secret upon due inquiry. Doubt, 
prejudice, and difficulty stood before him to oppose his pro- 
gress, but at last, conviction having been matured within 



The Mystery of the Skies. 203 

him, he rises to new effort, and forsaking the useless and 
untenable determinations of ignorant authority, set out on a 
voyage of discovery into the far-distant spaces of the sky. 
Borne away, in the pellucid car of imagination, after flashing 

" Through the midst of an immense concave 
Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
With shades of infinite colour, . . . 
An ever- varying glory," 

he reached the sun. There, in the azure canopy, he saw 
the stars, no longer stationary, but floating along through 
immensity; in the unimaginable harmony of regulated 
motion, he beheld — 

* ' Each with undeviating aim, 
In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 
Pursued its wondrous way." 

All seemed explained. Complexity vanished, and simplicity 
appeared. The sweep of those worlds which inhabited the 
far splendours of space was periodical, calculable, and pre- 
cise. They swirled along their diverse orbits in the same 
direction, and filled the same belt in the radiance through 
which they sped their ceaseless career. The earth was no 
longer the monarch of motion ; his sceptre was given to the 
sun, while the faithful moon, accompanying her lord in his 
exile, seemed to devote herself to the task of comforting 
him in hours of gloom, and to circle him with her love. 

Not all at once did the simple beauty of truth attract and 
charm. There were still moments when error retained its 
power, and prejudice refused to yield \ but decision came at 
last, and when experiment, frequently and carefully repeated, 
had verified the deductions of reason, he announced, with 
modesty, the new theory of astronomy, and became, by that 



204 Copernicus. 

announcement, the founder of a new dynasty of thinkers — 
scaled up an old epoch, and unsealed a new. 

A revolution was initiated. A few bold thinkers, struck 
by the simple grandeur of the new conception, sought from 
its author an explanation of his theory, proved by experi- 
ment, and attested by results. Among the most noteworthy 
of these was George Joachim, surnamed Rheticus, (15 14- 
1576,) one of those enthusiasts for knowledge who follow its 
track with unslacking zeal. Appointed at the early age of 
twenty-three to be professor of elementary mathematics in 
the University of Wittenburg, he laboured there with much 
acceptance for about two years, when hearing — probably 
from his superior, Reinhold (1511-1553) — of the changes 
introduced into astronomical science by Copernicus, he left 
his chair, repaired to Frauenburg, and became the disciple, 
assistant, and friend of the father of modern astronomy. 
This noble student, who forsook position and fame to 
enlarge his own acquirements, found Copernicus an adept 
in all kinds of knowledge. His enthusiasm was fired, and 
despite of personal peril, he became the zealous advocate, 
as well as the earliest public expounder, of the new tenets. 
This he did in a letter addressed to Dr Schoner, entitled, 
" Narratio de libris Revolutionum Revdi. Doct. Nicolai Co- 
pernici? printed at Dantzic in 1541, in which he asserted 
that the rotation of the earth is not a probability, but a 
truth, such a truth as Aristotle himself would have been 
willing to acknowledge and adopt. 

But the fame which brought Copernicus this whole- 
hearted disciple and loving admirer had excited some envy 
amongst those of his own order, as well as some displeasure 
in the palaces wherein preferment is arranged and given. 
In 1537, on the demise of Bishop Maurice, the successor of 



Genius Loses its Reward. 205 

his uncle, he was nominated one of four candidates for the 
bishopric of Warmia. There can be little doubt that Sigis- 
mund I., when he appointed John Flachsbmder, surnamed 
Dantzicus, (1484-1548,) was influenced by the desire of not 
appearing to favour and reward the well-known contemner 
of authority, if he was not even anxious to indicate his own 
aversion to the promulgation of the new theory. Dantzicus 
was indeed a most deserving person. He had been born a 
peasant, was educated at Cracow, was made professor of 
poetry there, became the secretary of the king, and had held 
the office of ambassador in England before his appointment 
to the bishopric of Warmia. He had had his share of 
honour and reward, yet he was preferred to Copernicus, who 
thereafter neither received nor looked for worldly advance- 
ment. Doubtlessly the successorship to his uncle would 
have been most grateful to his feelings, and must have 
seemed little more than a just reward for his powerful efforts 
to diminish the power of the Teutonic knights. His rejec- 
tion, therefore, seems to bear the import of a "vote of 
censure" on his innovating philosophy, unless, indeed, we 
are to believe that he was tinctured with Lutheranism, a 
supposition which has been entertained, but which appears 
to rest on far too narrow a basis. 

If it be as we suppose, how galling must this pointed 
dissent, if not dissatisfaction, have been to his noble soul ! 
Already had his spirit travailed exceedingly in the task of 
unravelling the intricate confusion of false science, and with 
undaunted perseverance defied and overcome the difficulties 
which beset the pathway of a new traveller in an untrodden 
way. But now, as if the toils he had undergone had not 
been enough to strain, with the exquisite torture of over- 
tension; the sinews of human thought, just when the signal 



206 Copernicus. 

whisper of success has been uttered, to the shout of derision 
formerly mouthed by the multitude are added the piercings 
of the malicious arrows of revenge, and the pain of the 
wounds occasioned by the crown of thorns which envy loves 
so well to plait for and to place on the brows of those who 
bow not " to the world, nor the world's law." 

It is gratifying to know, however, that in the meanwhile 
Copernicus had the kindly offices of charity to withdraw his 
thoughts from the pressure of life's cares, and the blessings 
of the poor to weigh in the balances against the muttered 
slanders of the superstitious or the silly, the laughter of the 
prejudiced and ignorant, or the perverse zeal of the bigoted 
and over-conservative. To vary his severer studies, he 
amused himself with drawing, painting, and mechanical con- 
trivances, devoted himself to the gratuitous attendance of the 
sick, busied himself in superintending the water supplies of 
the village, and in arranging the administrative concerns of 
the canonry. However sedulously employed in investigating 
the motions of those dazzling masses which wheel their 
mighty circles through the convolved heavens, he did not 
forget his duties as a denizen of earth, or neglect to add his 
mite of help to the distressed or sorrowing. 

Discouraged, but not disheartened, by his defeat in the 
candidature for the bishopric, Copernicus laboured on. 
Rheticus came, heard, examined, and was convinced. He 
threw himself boldly forward as the claimant of public re- 
cognition for the grand discoveries which the modest ex- 
candidate had made. Not contented with this, he prevailed 
on Copernicus to register his discoveries and to expound 
his views. To this advice Tideman Gysius, Bishop of Culm, 
and Cardinal Schomberg of Capua added their entreaties. 
Copernicus had, indeed, completely determined, as we for- 



Progress through Antagonism. 207 

merly stated, the whole of the elements of his theory by 1530, 
but we do not believe, as some do, that his magnum opus was 
composed and finished at that date. It is true that there 
are traces of his having begun such a work while resident in 
Cracow, but we know that he was naturally hesitant and 
careful. We may well assume, then, that having determined 
upon laying his speculations before the learned, he would 
feel anxious to set them forth with all the care at his com- 
mand, and that he would, at least, re-write his work, and 
test its teachings, incorporating therein the latest light he 
had received upon the subject. He would give the copy 
forth slowly, and revise discreetly, thus loading his advanced 
years with labour they were ill fitted to bear. Amidst dis- 
appointment and anxiety the work was at length done, and 
under the editorship of Rheticus, and the superintendence 
of Andrew Osiander, of Nuremburg, it was consigned to the 
press. Messengers were despatched from the printing-office 
to carry the proofs safely into the hands of Copernicus him- 
self, for jealousy tracked his doings, and the voice of enmity 
had been heard muttering, like the prelude to a storm. 
" May God have pity on us," writes Gysius, of Culm, " and 
avert the blow which now threatens thee ! Thine enemies 
and thy rivals combined — -those who charge thee with folly, 
and those who accuse thee of heresy — have been so success- 
ful in exciting the minds of the people of Nuremberg against 
thee, that men curse thy name in the streets ; the priests 
excommunicate thee from their pulpits ; and the university, 
hearing that thy book was to appear, has declared its inten- 
tion to break the printing-press of the publisher, and to 
destroy the work to which thy life has been devoted. Come 
and allay the tempest ; come quickly, or thou shalt be too 
late 1 " The threatened riot assumed a most formidable 



208 Copernicus. 

aspect Thrice an attempt was made to enter the premises, 
and once the power of fire was tried. The printers wrought 
with their pistols at hand, and the friends of Rheticus, Gysius, 
and Copernicus kept watch and ward by day and night. 
The manuscripts of the book were stolen by a compositor 
from the office, and the leaves were burnt in the public 
market-place. Such were the dangers which overhung the 
issue of the revolutionary work. As day by day the know- 
ledge of all these doings reached the ears of Copernicus, his 
soul became more and more subjected to excitement-, 
and his anxiety became intense. Alas ! too intense, as the 
issue proved. He had received notice that in three days 
more a messenger would be sent with the finished volume. 
His frame, already strung to the highest pitch, yielded ; he 
burst a blood-vessel; to the hemorrhage a stroke of 
paralysis succeeded, and memory and life began to fail. 
The awful anxiety of suspense had overcome the semi-ex- 
hausted life-powers, and thus it was with him as it ever is 
with men in the crisis of their being. 

"The ocean of to-morrow 
Breaks upon life's rocky shore 
With its turmoil, with its sorrow, 
Evermore, ah, evermore ! 
Flowing, ebbing, ebbing, flowing, 
Its emotions change and glide ; 
Fears of unknown trouble throwing 
Solemn shadows o'er the tide." 

In the indescribable agony of this uncertainty, which had 
unnerved his frame and almost overwhelmed his mind, he 
lay nursing hope even in the embraces of despair. And yet 
the ominous words, too late, would keep sounding in his 
ears, and booming through all the avenues of thought. 



The Hour and Power of Death. 209 

Life began silently and stealthily to ebb away. The torpor 
of death was closing the gateways to the palace of the soul. 
When suddenly sounds are heard, the rapid tramp of a 
horse's hoofs brings a strange sensation to that half-shut ear. 
It stops — it is — it is the messenger from Nuremberg ! He 
dismounts, hastens in; the eye of Copernicus sparkles with 
renewed life, his cheek flushes, and the pulses of his heart 
revive. He raises himself slowly, grasps the precious 
volume, touches " the great legacy he was to bequeath to 
mankind," turns his ardent gaze on its still damp pages, 
and smiles. The hour is come. The book falls from his 
hands ; " the common safeguard against oppression" is here; 
a faint voice rises on the quietude of the sick-room — "Lord, 
7iow let thy servant depart in peace." These words said, 
Copernicus rested from his labours in the kindly care of 
Death. That was the 23d of May 1543. Evening had 
passed away and taken her stars with her, morning had 
brought the rising sun and the glory of a new day; but 
before the shadows again fell, Copernicus had gone to yield 
up his account to the Sovereign of that creation whose 
mysteries, while acknowledging their inscrutability, he had 
attempted in part to know, to interpret, and to describe. 

The years passed on. The long ripening process of a 
great thought required to be gone through. Copernicus 
departed, but his thought remained. Wafted hither and 
thither, like the seeds of a plant, it sought a congenial soil 
to germinate in. That was found, and modern astronomy 
arose, flourished, and still flourishes. 

So lived, so died, he who gave the first real impulse to 
that thought which, through Moestlin and Giordano Bruno, 
the after-ages inherited. "Tycho Brahe attempted to restore 
the absurdities of the Ptolemaic system," but the rebellion 

o 



210 Copernicus. 

of experimental science is only to be quelled by proofs ex- 
celling in cogency those given by it ; the attempt failed, and 
the Copernican system of the universe was effectually incor- 
porated with the thoughts of men after it had produced such 
results as the names of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton recall. 
Let us reverence him as one of the heroes of old, whose life- 
battle was spent in honour ; but while we do so, let us not 
forget that 

* ' Earth hath her heroes still, who strive 
In silence for the right 5 
Unheralded to battle come 

Truth, Patience, Firmness, Might" 




Lord Clive — The Conquest of 
India. 



A.D. 1725— 1774. 



" Strange are the destinies of men and states! 

And oft within the little round of life, 

Where effort and effect, so stern in strife, 
Wage battle 'neath the banner of the fates, 
The strong will works a noble purpose out, 

By giving scope to energies sublime, 

By putting age-old evils to the rout, 
Making mankind its debtor for all time. 
Clive's influence, Indian history recast, 

And moulds even yet the future of the East ; 

And must, or Britain's empire shall have ceased 
To wield sure lordship o'er its regions vast. 

Arcot and Plassey did not all decide, 

But Clive began the glory gain'd by Clyde." 

— Jul. Sleeman. 



" A heaven-born general, who, without experience, surpassed all the 
soldiers of his time." — Lord Chatham. 

" Every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole 
career, must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, 
has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great, either in arms or in 
council." — Macauiay's Lord Clive. 




LORD CLIVE.— THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 
INDIA. 

|HE Right Hon. William Pitt, (afterwards Lord 
Chatham,) then one of His Majesty George II.'s 
principal secretaries of state, received a commu- 
nication dated "Calcutta, 7th January 1759," in which "the 
present possessions and future prospects" of the East India 
Company were passed under review ; the means necessary 
" to enable the Company to take the sovereignty [of India] 
upon themselves/' or, if it be thought " worthy the Govern- 
ment's taking it into hand," it is proven "that there will be 
litde difficulty in obtaining the absolute possession of these 
rich kingdoms." The writer of this letter, which anticipated 
the issues of history by a century, was Robert (afterwards 
Lord) Clive, — a man whose career was so useful and 
glorious as to tempt the pen of " the Philosopher of Fer- 
ney;" to draw forth from Lord Macaulay one of the most 
striking and eloquent papers which have ever enriched 
the pages of the Edinburgh Review; and to establish a 
name which merits appreciative mention in the historic 
annals both of Europe and India, as the inaugurator of 
that policy which Britain has recently (1858) consummated 



214 Lord Clive. 

by the annexation of India as an integral part of the 
dominions of her sovereign. 

There is no chance in human life ; all its issues are the 
results of an intexturing and combination of personal quali- 
fication and providential causation. The great "shaping 
Spirit" is supreme over the plan, pattern, and product of 
existence. To show in one concrete instance how truly 
and how grandly — using only the commonplace of life, and 
the seemingly accidental occurrences therein — Providence 
penetrates the soul with suggestion, such impulses as animate 
thought, such influences as stir to action, such aims as task 
the soul's best energies, will, w T e fancy, neither be useless 
nor unprofitable ; and we have selected for this purpose the 
biography of one who achieved eminence in the midst of 
the most unpropitious circumstances, by the spontaneous 
and persistent energy with which he pursued the main 
object of his life ; even while he was, indisputably, working 
out one of those grand changes in history which all-prescient 
Providence had fixed — that the age-hoar and amazing 
civilisation of Hindostan might be supplanted by a benigner, 
because a Christian, form of social life. This new central 
light by which we propose to examine the early phenomena 
of European conquest in the East will, we hope, exhibit 
events in such a form as, while not detracting from their 
picturesqueness, may increase their interest and intelligi- 
bility. Therein will lie our justification for bringing again, 
and now, under review a life and an epoch on which the 
best energies of genius have already been exerted* 

Robert Clive was born in the manor-house of Styche, 
in the parisli of Moreton Say, near Drayton-in-Hales, in the 
hundred of North Bradford, Shropshire, 29th September 
1725. His father, Richard Clive, a practising attorney, 



The Harvest of Wild Oats. 2 1 5 

married Miss Rebecca Gaskill, by whom he had a family of 
thirteen children, of whom Robert was the eldest. Before 
he had completed his third year, Robert Clive was sent to 
reside with his uncle-in-law, Mr Eayley, of Hope Hall, 
Manchester, where he was brought up in youth, and was 
more remarkable for wayward intractability of temper, 
ingenuity in mischief, and audacity in the execution of 
boyish freaks and pranks, than for application to study. 
A dashing perversity and fearlessness, as well as imperi- 
ousness of manner, secured to him the ringleadership of 
plot and play in school and at home. He was "put to 
school" at Lostock, in Cheshire ; at Drayton-in-Hales ; at 
the Merchant Taylors' in London ; and in them all acquired 
so wild a reputation that he was at last consigned to the 
private tuition of a Mr Sterling. It had been intended that 
he should follow his father's profession; but the daring 
unmanageability of his disposition induced his friends to 
regard themselves as lucky in getting rid of an annoyance 
by the attainment for him, in 1743, of a writership in the 
service of the Hon. East India Company. He set off 
immediately, scarcely eighteen, scantily furnished with 
money, and had a long and dangerous voyage. The ship was 
unseaworthy, and required to put in for repairs, — first at 
Brazil, where it lay nine months, and again at the Cape of 
Good Hope. It was the autumn of 1744 before he reached 
Madras, and then, — he had been obliged to borrow money 
from the captain at a high rate of interest ; and the only 
friend to whom he had letters of introduction had started 
for Europe months ago. Shy, proud, lonely — perhaps 
repentant — he held aloof from patronage and hospitality, 
and began his duty with moody irritability. He felt himself 
misplaced, grumbled at destiny, and moped himself into a 



216 Lord Clive. 

chronic melancholia, whose morbid gloom almost eclipsed 
and always clouded his reason. Life, so pent up and dull, 
became unendurable ; and one day, in an excess of misery, 
he attempted suicide. Twice the pistol, laid against his 
forehead, was snapped, yet missed fire. He threw it down 
dissatisfied. A fellow-clerk shortly after entered. "Fire 
that pistol out of the window ! " said Clive. He obeyed. 
The pistol went off, and Clive, starting up, exclaimed, "Fate 
has something in reserve for me to do then 1" and walked 
out. The perturbed state of his mind made him insubor- 
dinate, reckless, and a gambler — anything to brace his 
nerves and keep his mind alert. Personal disputes and 
public quarrels were the result. Once the Governor of 
Madras commanded him to apologise to his secretary for 
some insolent language he had used. Clive sullenly did so. 
The kindly functionary asked him to dinner. "No," 
replied Clive ; " I have not been commanded to dine with 
you." Again, he had lost considerably at cards, by two 
officers, whom he afterwards detected in the act of cheating, 
and whom, consequently, he refused to pay. One asked 
satisfaction : Clive complied. They met. Each was fur- 
nished with a loaded pistol, which, after having retired a 
given number of paces, each was to fire when he chose. 
Clive fired first, and missed. His opponent walked up to 
him, put the cold muzzle to Clive's head, and demanded an 
instant retractation. "Shoot!" said Clive; "I said you 
swindled — I maintain so still." The officer ejaculated, 
" Madman !" withdrew his pistol, and the matter was at an 
end. These are neither instances of bravery nor hardihood : 
they are merely signs of the reckless carelessness of his 
life, to which despair had reduced him. But the life-task of 
Clive lay before him, and that very excitement and worthy 



Light in Darkness. 2 1 7 

labour for which he pined and yearned were nearly ready to 
employ his hand. Panting impatiently under the unprofit- 
able restraints of a merchant-clerk's duties, and chafing and 
chiding at Fortune and Fate, he did not see the glimmer 
and the sheen foreshowing his futurity of fame, — 

"As the sun, 
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image 
On the atmosphere. " 

A few preliminary explanations will be required now, 
before we can adequately comprehend this epoch of crisis 
for Clive, India, and Britain. 

The Portuguese, shortly after 1497, began to hold com- 
mercial intercourse by sea with India ; but about a century 
thereafter, the Dutch and the English extended their ambi- 
tion to the Orient. On Dec. 31, 1600, 220 merchants and 
gentlemen of London became incorporated by charter into 
a Company possessed of the exclusive right of trading in 
the East Indies. On the renewal of this charter in i6r6, 
the number of shareholders was increased to 950. In 1634, 
a new Company, in which Charles I. had an interest, was 
formed ; but this soon merged into its elder rival, and they 
became incorporate and one in 1650. In 1661, Charles II. 
granted a new charter, in which the Company was em- 
powered " to make peace or war with or against princes 
and people, not being Christians;" and, in 1668, Bombay 
— which had been given by Portugal as a portion of Cathe- 
rine's dowry — was ceded to the Company on payment of an 
annual rent of ^10 in gold. In 1682, a new rival company 
was projected, but failed ; and a new charter was acquired 
by the old association in 1693. The Company did not, 
however, attain an organised form till 171 1 ; and in 1744, 
the House of Commons confirmed the privileges of the 



218 Lord Clive. 

Company, and granted an extension of their monopoly till 
1780. 

About 16 1 2, the Company's agents procured leave from 
the native authorities to establish warehouses at Surat, 
Ahmedabad, and Cambay; and gradually their factories 
spread over the chief islands of the Oriental Archipelago. 
In 1640, Fort St George, at Madras, was founded; and in 
1645, a factory, by permission of Mogul Shah Jehan, was 
erected near the present site of Calcutta. In these several 
places, as well as in Bombay, the Company carried on a 
trade in exporting from India, calicoes, diamonds, drugs, 
saltpetre, silk, tea, pepper, porcelain, &c, and importing in 
exchange, bullion, hardwares, lead, quicksilver, woollens, &c. 
In 1 7 15, power was granted to them to purchase thirty-seven 
townships in Bengal, where Calcutta was already assuming the 
importance of a settlement. There were, in 1744, the three 
presidencies — Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta — with their de- 
pendent territories, lying along the mere outskirts of Hindos- 
tan, in the possession of the English East India Company. 

The aboriginal Hindoo population of the country lying 
south of the mountains of Himalaya, and peaking forward 
into the Indian Ocean, were invaded by Mahmoud of 
Shizni, early in the eleventh century ; and towards the 
close of the twelfth, an Affghan dynasty was seated on the 
throne of Delhi. A century later a revolution occurred, 
and a new and longer-lived Mohammedan dynasty acquired 
dominion ; but the entire subjugation and subjection of the 
Hindoos to a Mohammedan monarch was not accomplished 
till Baber, a descendant of the " mighty Tamburlaine," 

" Thirsting for sovereignty and love of arms," 

founded a wide and stable empire in 1525. The petty 



Europe a7id India. 2 1 9 

Hindoo princes were replaced by tributary kings or 
nabobs, and, by daring yet judicious government, the whole 
of northern India was brought and kept under the sway of 
the Mogul emperors. On the death of Akbar, in 1605, 
Jehonghir succeeded. The empire was then apportioned 
among fifteen subahdars or viceroys, by whose favour — with 
the consent of their imperial master — the English company 
obtained the earlier trading settlements on the north-west 
coast already mentioned. With his great-grandson, Aurung- 
zebe, the dominion of the Moguls attained its highest 
growth and its widest stretch. But the glory of his power 
excited envy, and the Persians attacked his empire, while 
an associated confederacy of native Hindoo tribes, whose 
territories lay along his borders, waged a war of raids against 
him. On his death the subahdars revolted and asserted 
their independence. Feroksere, Aurungzebe's great-grand- 
son, granted leave to purchase those townships near Calcutta 
of which we have already spoken, probably in the hope of 
attaching the English to his cause in an invasion of his 
territories threatened by the Persians under Nadir Shah. 
While revolt, insurrection, and war distracted and disturbed 
the Indian peninsula, the ambition of Europeans was 
inflamed, and there arose a determination to claim a share 
in the booty to be gained in the struggle. 

We must again retrace the lines of time, and strive to 
delineate the respective positions of those European nations 
whose interests and enterprise led them to take part in the 
ongoings of the Hindostanee troubles, and to embroil them- 
selves with each other in the endeavour to snatch as much 
as they could from the disunited inhabitants of the East. 

Under the financier Colbert, in the reign of Louis XIV., 
an East India Company was established by the French. 



2 20 Lord Clive. 






Though indefatigably pursued for upwards of fifty years, the 
objects of their desire seemed doomed to utter failure ; for, 
in 1744, they possessed only one important settlement — 
Pondicherry, on the Coromandel coast, a fortified town near 
the mouth of the Gingee, and about a hundred miles south- 
west of Madras. Their other settlements were Carical, 
south of Pondicherry; Mahe, a small seaport on the 
Malabar coast ; and Chandernagore, a town sixteen miles 
further up the Hoogly than Calcutta, granted to the French, 
with an adjoining territory of 2330 acres, by Aurungzebe, in 
1676. Not only was the French company closely modelled 
after the English one, but it followed and kept as near to 
the tracks of English commerce as was possible. But 
France has always had a predilection for military organisa- 
tion, and she had not neglected here to plant her standards, 
and to place her forts with due regard to warlike contin- 
gencies. In the Indian Ocean, too, the islands of Mauritius 
and Bourbon, east of Madagascar, were French dependencies 
under military government. The continental possessions of 
France in the East were under the governorship of Joseph 
Francis Dupleix — a man of ability, energy, and ambition, 
well trained and practised in the management of business ; 
while the insular territories were ruled over by an officer 
whose experience in colonial affairs was extensive, and whose 
personal prowess and abilities were regarded as of a very 
high order — Labourdonnais. Such men, both by inclina- 
tion and interest, could not fail to be watchful of the course 
of events, and wishful of an opportunity to make quick- 
heeled advances on behalf of France — they stood on tiptoe 
with expectancy.. 

The Dutch, besides holding large possessions in the Spice 
Islands generally, had fixed upon Batavia, a town in the 



Political Complications. 221 

north-west of the island of Java, as their capital in the 
Eastern Archipelago \ had succeeded in expelling the Por- 
tuguese from Ceylon, and in bringing the maritime districts 
of it into subjection \ they possessed, besides, a strongly 
garrisoned and flourishing establishment at Chinsura, on the 
right bank of the Hoogly, about four miles from Chander- 
nagore, and twenty from Calcutta. 

At this particular time we have in India a weak central 
government, revolted subahdars, invading enemies, insurgent 
subjects, or raiding neighbours ; and upon their coasts, and 
in their vicinity, anxious competitors for profit, fame, and 
national renown, held in check by the accident (then rare) 
of peace ; but ready " to let slip the dogs of war " on any 
plausible pretext; for by success therein all their wishes 
were to be gained, and, perhaps, even more than all. 

In 1740, Charles VI. of Germany — in whom the male 
line of the House of Hapsburg terminated — expired, and 
almost immediately thereafter the war of the Austrian suc- 
cession broke out. It had its origin in the will of the 
German • emperor — called the Pragmatic Sanction — signed 
in 1724, by which the order of the succession and accession 
of the royal family of Austria was regulated. By this docu- 
ment — which had obtained the adhesion or concurrence of 
all the chief royal families of Europe, except the Bourbons — 
it was arranged that Maria Theresa, only daughter of Charles 
VI., and her children, should succeed him. On his demise, 
it was determined by France, Prussia, Spain, Saxony, 
Bavaria, and Sardinia, to dismember and partition the 
Austrian dominions. Stirred by a noble spirit of resistancy, 
the young empress staked her fortunes on the hazard of war 
— the burden of which, however, fell latterly upon England 
on the one part, and France on the other. The formal 



222 Lord Clive. 

declaration of war between these nations was issued in 
1744. 

As soon as the news of the commencement of hostilities 
arrived, Labourdonnais decided on seizing at once the ad- 
vantages placed in his grasp by this opportune conjuncture. 
The Indian Ocean was quickly astir with his fleet, and on 
14th September 1746, the British residents at Madras saw a 
French fleet at anchor on tjje surf-beaten coast. In five 
days the French flag waved in Fort St George, and articles 
of capitulation were in process of signature. The English 
were placed on parole, and a moderate ransom was agreed 
to for the restoration of the city, if paid within a given 
period. Dupleix, however, had other aims on hand, and 
feeling offended that the glory of first stepping into the 
troubled waters of Indian policy had been taken from him, 
fomented the spleen of the English, and annoyed his rival 
by thwarting his schemes in their nicest point — his honour. 
Asserting that he alone was authorised to represent France 
on Continental India, he sent an officer and troops to 
assume the permanent management of Madras, to take the 
English as prisoners of war, to plunder the town, and to 
carry the governor and chief inhabitants of the place to 
Pondicherry. The parole contract being thus broken, many 
Englishmen escaped from Madras to Fort St David. Clive 
escaped disguised as a Mussulman. Danger whetted his 
temper, and stirred his blood. 

Dupleix, (19th December 1746,) anxious to gain the full 
advantage of the consternation which the English felt at this 
sad and sudden turn of events, concentrated a force before 
Fort St David. Resistance having been determined on, 
Robert Clive volunteered his services \ and, in daring sortie, 
with deadly impetuosity and irrepulsible bravery, hazarded 



War and Diplomacy. 223 

his untutored intrepidity against the trained bands of the 
enemy. His valour and discretion were so conspicuous, 
that he was rewarded by an ensigncy in the Company's 
army — a position which, though bringing him under the in- 
fluences of " Captain Sword/' did not release him from the 
drudgery entailed on him by his previous enlistment under 
" Captain Pen." The siege was hastily raised by Dupleix 
on the appearance of Admiral Griffin's fleet, and dive's 
musket was unwillingly re-exchanged for the goose- quill. 

An expedition against the Mauritius having failed, Admiral 
Boscawen, its leader, disembarked his troops before Pondi- 
cherry, with the design of revenging the siege of Fort St 
David. This thirty-one days' unsuccessful enterprise restored 
Clive to the restless ecstasy of war, where he displayed the 
energy and coolness of his nature in acts of gallantry and at 
moments of danger so strikingly as to rouse the jealousy of 
some of the "regular" officers; and he found it necessary to 
rebut the sneers made on him as an " interloper/' by chal- 
lenging one of the officers to personal conflict in a duel. 
The latter refused, and was expelled from the service. Peace 
was, however, concluded in Europe in 1748, and matters in 
India were relegated to the status in quo ante bellum. 

This, however, could not be. Hostilities had arisen, and 
no treaty could settle the young hot blood of Clive, who had 
tasted " the insatiate joy" of a vocation, or calm the insur- 
gent ambition which swelled in the heart of Dupleix. The 
pathway to power was open and inviting ; and shrewd men 
saw that no restraint could be vigorous enough to check the 
desire for " sovereign sway and masterdom " which had been 
excited. The genius of Dupleix soon carried the fierce 
spirit of warfare into diplomacy, and a new contest of chi- 
canery and circumvention began. The rivalry was inar> 



224 Lord C live. 






peasable, and peace impossible. Supremacy must be had 
by one or other at all hazards. 

Dupleix schemed, plotted, counterplotted, and planned ; 
power in his grasp, and an army at his command. Clive 
spent doleful days among sheaves of invoices and piles of 
ledgers in Writers' Buildings, Madras, and his hand grew 
nervous as his soul revolted against the calm and unexciting 
life he lead, which he unluckily strove to render more en- 
durable by gaming. 

Ul Mulk, subahdar of the Deccan, or south country of 
Hindostan, died in 1748, leaving six sons and a grandson to 
contest for the occupancy of the vacant throne. Dupleix at 
once determined to rush into the thick of the hostilities, and 
to work out of those troubles which distracted Hyderabad a 
signal success for his native country, and glory as well as 
profit to himself. Ul Mulk had proclaimed his grandson 
heir, and appointed Anwar-u-deen, nabob of Arcot in the 
Carnatic, the territory on which both Madras and Pondi- 
cherry were situated, guardian of the child. Anwar-u-deen 
connived at the murder of the child \ and Nazir Jung, eldest 
son of Ul Mulk, was proclaimed subahdar of the Deccan. 
Merzapha Jung, his nephew, at the head of a large party of 
Hindoos and Mussulmans, disputed his accession. Dupleix 
not only encouraged Merzapha, but also paid a ransom of 
^70,000 to the Mahrattas for the liberation of Chunda 
Sahib, formerly prime minister (dewan) of the Deccan, of 
whose children he was the guardian, that he might set him 
up as a rival to Anwar-u-deen, who, as well as Nazir Jung, 
were favoured by the English, and — inclined to return the 
compliment. The tools, or puppets, of Dupleix took the 
field, well helped by their master, and marched into the 
Carnatic. Anwur-u-deen met them. He was slain ; the 



Diamond cut Diamond. 225 

enemy seized his eldest son \ and his youngest, with some 
difficulty, escaped to Trichinopoly. Nazir Jung entered the 
field aided by Major Lawrence ; they caused the subahdar 
and nabob to retreat to Pondicherry. Dupleix sent them 
out, reinforced, to fight. A mutiny in the French corps led 
to the dissolution of the army. Merzapha surrendered to 
his uncle, and was imprisoned ; and Nazir Jung, ungrate- 
fully refusing to implement his promises to Major Lawrence, 
was left to himself. Dupleix bribed some of his chiefs, and 
Nazir Jung was murdered. Merzapha w T as released and 
seated on the throne, while Dupleix, as a reward for his 
timely help and crafty suggestiveness, was proclaimed 
Dewan of the Deccan ; a present of ^200,000, besides 
silks, gems, &c, of more than equal value, was given him, 
and immense treasure was supplied by him to the French 
exchequer from the hoards of the conquered subahdar and 
nabob. The greatness of Merzapha was short-lived. The 
Patan chiefs, by whom the obstacle to his elevation was re- 
moved, revolted because he would not comply with some of 
their exorbitant demands, and he was slain. M. Bussy, the 
French representative at his court, immediately released 
Salabut Jung, one of Ul Mulk's sons, and declared him 
subahdar ; and the gigantic schemes of Dupleix seemed 
about to go on unhindered to success. The infatuation of 
gratified vanity, however, defeated his purposes; for one 
morning the residents in Fort St David and Madras saw the 
white flag of France unexpectedly waving round their 
boundaries, as if challenging them to overpass the barriers 
to their advancement France had erected. No heart with 
British blood in it could brook an insult such as that. War 
was accordingly determined on, and Captain Ginger, an 
over-cautious and hesitant commander, was sent to raise the 

p 



226 Lord C live. 

siege of Trichinopoly, where Mohammed Ali, Anwar u-deen's 
son, was sorely bestead. 

Lieutenant Clive accompanied this force as commissary, 
and when it was defeated at Valconda, he set out alone to 
Fort St David for more men and ampler stores. These he 
succeeded in obtaining, and although attacked by a horde 
of Polygars, against whom he maintained a running fight, 
led the men and brought the stores triumphantly to Tri- 
chinopoly. His bravery and energy were rewarded with a 
captaincy. He encountered and overcame a French force 
while conducting another detachment of auxiliaries to the 
besieged city. During his brief sojourns at Trichinopoly, 
and from information acquired in his repeated journeys, 
Clive learned sufficient to convince him, that unless more 
energetic measures were instantly taken, Chunda Sahib 
would be the nominal victor, and the Frenchman, Dupleix, 
the real one. Such an event wouldhave led to the complete 
sweeping away of the British from the Indian coasts, and 
the entire subjugation of Hindostan to France — then fact 
ripening into Encyclopaedism and maturing for the Revolu- 
tion. How much of all that men hold dear and prize, hung 
upon this single "gage of battle !" England's material wealth 
and moral grandeur — India's ultimate civilisation and reli- 
gious advancement — might we not even say, the future 
"balance of power in Europe," depended on the wit of soul, 
the virtuous bravery, and intelligent skill of those who held 
the springs of causation at their sword-points. Clive's dash- 
ing intrepidity had taught him the grand secret of success — 

" Dull not device by coldness or delay." 

No sooner, then, had he formed a scheme likely to touch 
effectively this very turning-point of fortune, than he hastened 



Impossibilities Possible. 227 

to its execution. The daring cunning of this new plan at 
once startled and pleased — but "impossibilities" hemmed 
and circumvented its accomplishment. Clive urged, with 
all the passionate earnestness of a man who sees his way 
and feels his nerves tingle for the moment of action, first 
the practicability of the scheme, then the desperate ebb to 
which the fortunes of the Company were reduced; and more 
from a conviction that "when things are at the worst 
they're sure to mend — or end," Mr Saunders, the Company's 
agent at Madras, consented to stake, upon Clive's assurance 
of success, the whole future of the Company in India. 
Clive's plan was this — Create a diversion from Trichinopoly 
by an attack on Arcot, the wealthy capital of Chunda Sahib, 
a place containing 100,000 inhabitants, garrisoned with 
about 15,000 of the best trained troops, well provided with 
guns and ammunition, and thus relieve Mohammed AH 
from the threatening power of France, and by causing a 
dispersion of the troops of Chunda Sahib and his allies, 
increase the opportunities of active hostilities and the 
chances of war. With 200 Europeans and 300 trained 
Sepoys — after leaving Madras and St David's almost de- 
fenceless — Clive took his leave of the former garrison on 
the 26th of August 175 1 \ by the 29th he had reached Con 
jeveram, forty miles inland. Here a thunder-storm, such 
as might have awed the very stoutest soul, broke upon his 
march; but he was dauntless, and continued his progress. 
Spies from this inland capital saw and reported the strange 
disregard, even to the rage of nature, which these islanders 
exhibited, and the commandant of the garrison, struck by 
the event, evacuated the place, and gave the assailants free 
ingress. So far Clive's anticipations were justified, though 
the struggle was delayed, not over. He proclaimed im- 



2 23 Lord Clive. 

munity to life and property unless used against him, and 
by restraining his men from pillage or injury, won the regard 
of the inhabitants, who, on promise of payment, helped him 
to repair the walls and to prepare for the siege which he 
expected. Twice he threw himself from the fortress upon 
the encamping enemy, though with little success. In a third 
sortie he totally routed them, and sent out his company to 
prevent the enemy from intercepting some guns he had 
commissioned from Madras — retaining only eighty armed 
men in Arcot. The enemy hastened to re-collect, and 
rushed upon the citadel. He held them at bay till his own 
forces, with the guns, entered the gate. Now, Chunda 
Sahib, at all hazards, to save his capital, detached largely 
from the siege-force of Trichinopoly, and hurried with 
intense anxiety to Arcot. Ten thousand men invested it; 
while Give's diminished force scarcely manned the ramparts. 
For fifty days the siege was pressed; heavy guns made 
breaches in the walls ; constant musketry swept the fortifi- 
cations; supplies were held back, and yet Clive's indefati- 
gable zeal sustained his men and kept up the throb of 
courage in their hearts. The Sepoys, when scarcity had 
overtaken them, petitioned him to give rations of solid rice 
to the Europeans, and to serve them with the boilings 
of the day's allowance only. Bribes were tried, threats were 
uttered by the rajah; but Clive despised them both. No 
negotiations but those of weapons could be entered into 
then. An attempt to relieve Clive, from Madras, failed. 
Ginger and Mohammed Ali passively accepted the siege, 
and made no attempt to benefit by the withdrawal of troops 
secured by the audacious risks of Captain Clive. At length 
Clive's boldness brought him his reward. Morari Row, a 
Mahratta chief, admiring the man who, in India, first proved 



Victory at A rcot. 229 

that the British could fight, came to his help with 6000 men. 
Chunda Sahib had resolved on an assault. On a holy day 
— 14th November 1751, kept with exceeding fervour, in- 
creased by plenteous allowances of bang — the attack was 
begun at dawn. Clive was ready. Bang-made bravery and 
superstitious ardour failed. The enemy, though nearly ten 
to one, was repulsed at every point. The master-mind was 
lord of the situation. Quailless strength of soul, a rare 
capacity for eliciting and holding at his will the sympathies 
of his coadjutors, supplied Clive with the whole magic of 
war, and though he had never studied its arts or been trained 
in its schools, the best authorities commend his tactics and 
write his canons in their books. A futile fire was kept up 
till night, by the command of Chunda Sahib, to conceal his 
retreat. On the morrow the enemy had fled. Clive was 
triumphant. Guns, treasures, military stores, became his, 
and he acquired the honourable title of Sabat Jung — the 
Daring in War — from the admiring natives, who looked upon 
his success as having in it a dash of the miraculous. In 
this crisis of England's fate, one man only — " The hero of 
Arcot" — seems to have foreseen and foreknown the intense 
issue of the strife, and to have shown himself .fit for the 
emergency from which the rise of British power in India 
dates and endures. 

Success favours the persistent ; and Clive possessed that 
unsleeping energy which constitutes the chief characteristic 
of each master mind. 

"Sloth, the nurse of vices, 
And rust of action, was a stranger to him." 

Arcot was but the beginning of a succession of triumphs. 
Reinforced by a few soldiers from Madras, and aided by the 
troops of Morari Row, Clive took the fort of Timery, fell 



230 Lord Clive. 

upon a corps, headed by the French, despatched from Tri- 
chinopoly to the assistance of Chunda Sahib — with whom 
they had effected a junction — and defeated it, gaining the 
treasure chest of the rajah. Arnee surrendered unresist- 
ingly ■ and Conjeveram, after a brief struggle, was effectually 
reduced. The flush of glory in dive's heart made him 
irresistible, and each additional victory acted as a spur to 
his zeal. His vigorous restlessness changed waverers into 
allies, and his indomitable spirit wrested submission from 
each adversary. Covered with the renown of unexampled 
conquests, he proceeded to Fort St David to report progress 
and plan a future. 

It was only, however, where the man of clear aim and 
decisive policy directed action and compelled obedience, 
that matters progressed favourably. Ginger and Mohammed 
Ali still remained cooped up in Trichinopoly, effortless, and 
Chunda Sahib had collected a new army, which Dupleix 
had reinforced with 500 formidable French infantry, under 
European leaders. After laying waste the districts whose 
inhabitants were favourable to Mohammed Ali, the rajah 
attacked Poonamalee, and succeeded in destroying it and 
the English residences in its neighbourhood. Clive was 
asked to meet him, did so, and, after a keen contest at 
Coverspak, totally routed the enemy. Elated with their 
hard-won victory, Clive's army on their homeward march 
came within sight of a city, recently erected by Dupleix in 
commemoration of his success in founding a French empire 
in India, and named by him the "City of Victory." A lofty 
column, on whose four sides it was intended to inscribe, in 
different languages, an epigraph regarding the glories and 
labours of the French statesman, was just reaching comple- 
tion. Clive immediately resolved upon the demolition of 



Disappointment and Change. 231 

the boastful lie. This was done, as an indication to India 
of the unchallengeable hardihood of the British, of the 
futility of the French policy, and of the real weakness of 
the self-styled leading power. To Dupleix it was undoubt- 
edly throwing down a gage of battle, which it would be 
hazardous to accept and dangerous to refuse. It certainly 
committed Clive to ultimate hostilities, and made him 
sufficiently marked as the antagonist of the Dupleix policy. 
He returned to Fort St David unopposed and untouched, 
his intended work more than accomplished, and his men 
enthusiastic for new adventures. 

Clive was next nominated to command an attack upon 
the lines of the enemy entrenched round Trichinopoly \ 
but while he was organising his force, and just on the point 
of marching, Major Lawrence, his superior — a brave, care- 
fully-bred, practical soldier — arrived from England, and 
assumed the leadership of the expedition. Clive unhesitat- 
ingly relinquished the nomination, and accepted a subor- 
dinate position, where he ought to have been first. Duty 
does not so much love place as labour, and Clive was 
possessed of the fine military instinct of subordinacy in the 
ranks, and indomitability in action. No slight labour lay 
before the English forces. Trichinopoly stands at the head 
of the delta of the Cauvery river, 190 miles south-west of 
Madras. Its fort is placed on an isolated rock, which rises 
600 feet above the alluvial expanse that lies around. 
Chunda Sahib and M. Law, commander of the French 
contingent, completely blockaded the fort and town, and 
the British required to besiege the besiegers. Law had 
established his head-quarters on Seringham, an island 
formed by two branches of the Coleroon ; it is holy ground 
in a Hindoo's eye, and contains one of the most famed 



232 Lord Clive. 

pagodas of Southern India. Clive suggested that he, with 
half the British force, should occupy the village of Samia- 
veran, right in the line of communication between Trichi- 
nopoly and Pondicherry, where Dupleix sat designing those 
webs of policy which his agents were not astute enough to 
work, and he was not brave enough to manage in person. 
Lawrence assented. Clive made a rapid dash upon the 
rajah's forces, broke their lines, and enabled Lawrence to 
effect an entrance into the beleaguered fort. He afterwards 
completely effected his design, but that mainly through a 
somewhat melodramatic series _ of war incidents, in which 
Clive was the leader. Samiaveran was the master position 
of the siege; Dupleix perceived this, and sent a relieving, 
corps under M. d'Auteuil ; Clive resolved to intercept it; 
d'Auteuil retreated to Uttalore, and Clive, immediately 
countermarching, regained his quarters. Law heard of 
Give's departure, and determined upon attacking the en- 
feebled encampment during its commander's absence; aided 
by ' forty English deserters, under an Irish officer, he 
proceeded to effect his purpose. Unaware of Clive's return, 
Law led about 800 men towards the camp. The English 
sentinels challenged the advancing force, the deserters 
responded ; they passed in ; but their impatient haste de- 
feated the success of the manoeuvre. They fired at once. 
One of their musket balls shattered the chest which Clive — 
snatching a moment's rest after his long march — used as a 
pillow. He was instantly awake. Rushing amongst his 
men, he found them under arms, but entirely in ignorance 
of what had occurred. Clive, in a passion, flew upon the 
French Sepoys, thinking they were his own, and scolded 
them in the confusion for their folly, until one of them con- 
vinced him of his mistake by wounding him on the thigh. 



The Melodrama of Reality. 233 

Unappalled by this unexpected apparition of an armed 
enemy in the very heart of his own stronghold, he called 
for an instant surrender from the foe ; a number yielded, 
and he gave them in charge of a band of Sepoys of their 
own party. Suddenly the mist cleared away from his view ; 
he divined the trick, and counter-plotted so sagaciously as 
to hold active hostilities in check till daylight broke, when 
he gave deadly fight to the enemy. Faint with the loss of 
blood, leaning upon the shoulders of two of his men, he 
ordered the action. One of the deserters, fearful of the 
evil upshot of the exploit, fired at Clive, but missing his 
mark, killed one of Clive' s supporters. Thrice had Death, 
in one engagement, thus aimed at the life of the leading 
thoughtsman and strategist among the British, but, unnerved 
by the hardihood of the hero, failed in his purpose. 

This failure rendered affairs desperate. Chunda Sahib 
left his followers to shift for themselves, and, instead of 
honest capitulation, chose to negotiate for escape with the 
leader of Clive's Tanjore contingent. He proved false, 
and put the rajah to death. Law persistently braved and 
endured, waiting for help which could not come, for Clive 
intercepted every auxiliary band. At length he was com- 
pelled to submit. Dupleix's schemes, however craftily 
conceived, were foiled on every side. He bribed, intrigued, 
flattered, promised, and threatened; but Lawrence van- 
quished his nephew under the walls of Gingee, and Clive 
was summoned to Madras to undertake a new enterprise. 

Covelong, twenty miles south of Madras, and Chingleput, 
about fifteen miles south-west of that, were then in the hands 
of the French, and interfered with the interests of Madras. It 
was advisable they should be reduced, and this was the mis- 
sion to which Clive was called. The only available forces for 



234 Lord Clive. 

this expedition were 500 freshly-levied Sepoys, and 200 
Europeans, crimped from the dens of London, or exiled 
from its gaols, and pitched, like shot rubbish, on the quays 
of Madras. A regular Falstaff's regiment it was ! How- 
ever, Clive, born to manage men, soon disciplined them 
into daring, by the most successful and contagious of all 
agencies — example. He led his motley brigade of vaga- 
bonds against Covelong, and it was captured. While their 
exultation was at its full, he marched them on to Chingleput. 
A detachment had just left it to help the Covelongians. 
They were too late. Clive heard of their advance, placed 
his men in ambush, and at a wave of his hand they 
delivered such a volley as resulted in the immediate flight 
of the auxiliaries. Ill news travels fast ; but Clive was at 
Chingleput almost as early as the report of the disaster. 
Without delay he commanded an escalade, and the assault 
was just on the point of commencing, when the French 
commander begged a truce, and afterwards stipulated for a 
surrender, accompanied by the honours of war. Clive was 
glad to purchase real success at the price of gratifying this 
little piece of mere vanity ; and while the French comman- 
dant issued with flying colours and beating drums, Clive 
entered with the calm collectedness of a genuine hero. But 
the effects of wounds, and of this three years' strain on the 
mind, unnerved and enfeebled him, and the hour of reaction 
came. He returned to Madras, a fitting subject for a sick 
nurse. This he found in the young, handsome, and amiable 
sister of his old friend, Mr Maskelyne, in whose company 
he had escaped from Madras eight years before. " Pity is 
akin to love," and Miss Margaret Maskelyne's affections 
were gained in the sick-room of him who had won honours 
in the camp and on the tented field. On 15th March 1753 



Marriage > Home> and Parliament. 235 

Give, by marriage, united his destiny with hers, and shortly 
thereafter, on leave of absence, he and his bride embarked 
for England, where, on 7th March 1754, Edward Clive, 
their son, was born. 

Clive' s reception in his native country was enthusiastic 
and flattering. He was everywhere feted and caressed. 
The Court of Directors of the East India Company, at a 
magnificent public banquet, presented him with a diamond- 
hilted sword, value ^500, — a gift which he, much to his 
credit, only accepted on condition that a similar honour 
should be conferred on his superior, Lawrence. He had 
acquired a considerable amount of wealth in his brief but 
brisk military career, and dutifully expended a portion of it 
in relieving the paternal estates of heavy mortgage burdens, 
and assisting in the establishment of his brothers and 
sisters. He rattled his equipages grandly among the nobility, 
and mingled in the political intrigues of the time. Flattered 
and befooled into a parliamentary contest, he was, after the 
usual complimentary (?) acknowledgments to the " free and 
independent electors/' chosen, 1754, member for St Michael's, 
Cornwall. He was ousted on petition, by a merely party 
dodge, and after all his waste of wealth, was left apparently 
careerless. 

In the meanwhile, the French and English India Com- 
panies had met to arrange their difficulties, and had agreed 
to relinquish their warlike antagonism. Clive was at home; 
Dupleix was recalled, and thanklessly treated by those 
for whose interest he had toiled ; halcyon days of peace 
in India beamed from the treaty papers of the directors. 
The English were superior in the Carnatic, the French 
held chief sway in the Deccan, and all seemed equable and 
fair; but European politics became complicated, and pre* 



236 Lord Clive. 

monitory mutterings of a continental war were heard in the 
salons, Clive had pretty well indoctrinated the Company 
with his opinion, that there could be no real peace in India 
for the English while any other European power was in- 
fluential there ; and he was known, on the trustworthy tes- 
timony of Major Lawrence, to be "a man of an undaunted 
resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind 
which never left him — born a soldier." With the intention 
of being ready, should war really become imminent, the 
Directors of the India Company invited Clive to reaccept 
office under them, with a royal commission, as colonel. He 
instantly agreed, and left England for Bombay — the general 
rendezvous for the British navy on Indian service — with 
three companies of Royal Artillery, and 300 infantry, in 
February 1755. Colonel Scott, his senior officer, expired 
before Clive reached Bombay, and he thus became chief of 
the British forces in India. He would have invaded the 
Deccan at once, but a recently-concluded treaty or con- 
vention stood in the way, and he was reluctantly compelled 
to delay the execution of his purpose. 

The restless ardour of his disposition soon pointed out 
other occupation. Angria, a Mahratta pirate, the scourge 
of the coast of Malabar, held the rocky fortress of Gheriah, 
and from an excellent, land-locked harbour, his barques 
issued to plunder the neighbouring coast towns, or to seize 
the vessels of traders. Clive proposed to Admiral Watson 
the reduction of this stronghold; and the proportions of the 
expected booty having been agreed on, they set to work, 
and in two days succeeded in razing the pirate's dens to the 
ground, and defeating the outlaws. Clive thereafter sailed 
for Fort St David, where he arrived, by a singular coinci- 



The Black Hole of Calcutta. 237 

dence, on the very day of the capture of Calcutta, the 
memorable 20th June 1756. 

The circumstances of this catastrophe may be briefly told. 
Aliverdy Khan, Subadar of Bengal, died April 1756, and 
his grand-nephew, who adopted the name of Surajah Dow- 
lah, " Sun of Empire," — a dissolute, ignorant, tyrannical, 
and selfish prince — succeeded him. He hated the British, 
and coveted their wealth ; and he resolved at once on their 
extirpation from his territories. With an army of 30,000 
cavalry, 40,000 infantry, and 400 elephants, he marched 
against Calcutta, whose inhabitants were just strengthening 
their forts against invasion by the French, and invested it 
on 1 8th June. The hearts of the Europeans failed them 
for -fear, because as yet unprepared for resistance to such a 
force. They thought it the best policy to get on shipboard 
and escape. A few were left behind, and these determined 
to hold out, in the hope of gaining terms. The place was 
stormed; they were all taken, and to the number of 146, 
thrust into a twenty feet square dungeon, which, before 
morning, had become a putrid charnel-house, from which 
only twenty-three issued alive. The rest had perished by 
the intolerable pangs of suffocation and thirst. As an ex- 
ample of the atrocious criminality of ignorance and self- 
indulgent apathy, the Black Hole of Calcutta has become 
proverbial. Intense hate for the man who, having com- 
mitted a wrong like that, boasted of having thereby exter- 
minated the British, and evinced no sign of horror at the 
hideous deed, deepened into a slakeless thirst for vengeance. 
When, therefore, on the 16th of August, the news reached 
Madras, the governors of the presidency felt fell as tigers, 
and resolved upon the instantaneous chastisement of the 



238 Lord Clive. 

offending Surajah. The whole available strength of the 
Company was immediately and unhesitatingly placed under 
the command of Clive, with power to adopt the most sum- 
mary and signal proceedings. By the nth of October, 900 
European infantry and 1500 Sepoys were embarked, and 
set sail in five men-of-war and five transports. Admiral 
Watson led the navy. They reached Fulta on 2 2d De- 
cember, and immediately disembarked. Clive at once 
marched through the jungle upon Budge-Budge. It capitu- 
lated, and he went on to Fort William. Watson had got 
ready to batter it from the seaboard as soon as Clive had 
surrounded it on land. Operations were at once begun : by 
the 2d of January 1757, it had succumbed; and on the 
nth the Hoogly was plundered and burnt. So far hardt 
hood bore him on; and then, when such rash heroism 
seemed to be unfitting, he plied the arts of negotiation with 
almost equal skill. He met ruse with ruse, and knavery 
with cunning. A trained diplomatist could not have been 
more adroit in the art of circumventing an enemy smilingly. 
Clive offered to treat for terms ; the Surajah hesitated, but 
marched on. Clive did not oppose him, even where the 
strategies of war promised success, though he kept to the 
open field, and still insisted on negotiation. He was, in 
reality, but working him into irrecoverable toils. The 
Surajah got his army between Clive and Calcutta, and had 
the latter so besieged as to have some of his men in its 
outer streets, and was already anticipating an easy conquest 
Clive was born a match for seemingly adverse fates. He 
sent, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Nabob's 
troops ; intimating at the same time that, unless this was 
done, all proposals for negotiation must cease, and ulterior 
measures be taken. The Surajah thought this the sublime 



Politics and Policy. 239 

of impudence, and replied with passionate scorn. Before 
daybreak next day, Clive, having formed a single column of 
2200 men, cut a bloody avenue through the hosts of the 
besiegers, and with steady continuity kept on until he had 
re-established communications with the garrison. The 
Nabob retreated in dismay, and offered terms. These 
Clive accepted, though apparently opposed to " the interest 
and reputation of a soldier," for the following good and 
sufficient reasons. 

News had arrived of the outbreak of " the seven years' 
war;" M. Bussy was up in the Northern Circars, and 
anxious to gain an offensive and defensive alliance with the 
Surajah ; Count Lally, whose hatred of Britain had all the 
intensity of a passion, was preparing a military force for ser- 
vice in the Carnatic ; and a French fleet was expected in 
the Bay of Bengal. The government at Madras, who had 
stripped themselves of all defence in their anxiety for the 
infliction of a penal war on the Surajah, were becoming 
fearful for their own safety in the emergencies that threat- 
ened ; and pressed for Clive's return. These affairs were 
likely to strike at the root of the policy he had inaugurated, 
and in the achievement of which he had done so much. To 
precipitate a treaty before Bussy could unfold the complica- 
tions of European politics, and gain over the Surajah to his 
schemes \ to aim a sure blow at the French, early enough to 
destroy the prestige of their arms ; and to be able then to 
flash off into the Circars, against M. Bussy, before reinforce- 
ments could reach him, and the reanimation of news from 
Europe increased the confidence of his troops — seemed to 
be matters of graver importance, in Clive's eyes, than the 
grumbling of subordinates, the taunts of governors, or the 
reproaches of his naval coadjutors. He therefore concluded 



240 Lord Clive. 

a treaty of peace, whose conditions he saw his way through ; 
for he had matured his diplomacy far-sightedly enough. 
The fortunes of the British power in India were set " upon 
the hazard of a die ; " he bravely risked, and luckily won, 
and claimed that as his justification. 

Clive drove on his preparations for attacking Chanderna- 
gore, the head-quarters of the French in Bengal. The 
Surajah was actively negotiating with M. Renault, its gover- 
nor, for a treaty of alliance. Clive suspected as much, and 
therefore claimed by treaty the aid of his surajahship 
against the French, now at war with the British. The 
Surajah replied by asking dive's help against the Afghauns, 
who were threatening him with invasion. Clive unex- 
pectedly agreed, and on the principle of "diamond cut 
diamond," announced his intention to march for Moor- 
shedabad, to the Suraj all's help, so soon as he could manage 
to storm Chandernagore on his way, that no enemy's camp 
might be left between his army and Calcutta. On the 23d 
of March Chandernagore capitulated. The Surajah, con- 
scious of his own duplicity, and not so much trusting as 
fearing his ally, bribed off the Afghauns, and strictly forbade 
Clive's advance on pain of being held as an enemy. This 
put the matter at once on the footing Clive desired ; he 
determined to have done with him ; and the consummate 
scoundrelism of Indian diplomacy now received a singular 
accession to its annals. 

Surajah Dowlah had somewhat heavily taxed his rich 
Hindoo subjects ; and sensitive on this point, they had re- 
solved to try a new master. Meer Jaffier, the Suraj all's 
commander-in-chief, and a marriage relation of the late 
subahdar, Aliverdy Khan, was the substitute finally fixed on. 
The arch-plotter was one Omichund, a Hindoo merchant, 



Treason and Foi'gery. 24.1 

who had left Calcutta and gone to Moorshedabad, where he 
had ingratiated himself with the Surajah by unscrupulous 
hypocrisy. It was proposed to Clive by a Mr Watts — a 
semi-spy, semi-prisoner at the Surajah's court — that he should 
become a party to the plot, declare war against the Surajah, 
and march at once against Moorshedabad. On the Surajarr's 
taking the field, Meer Jaffier was to pass over, with all his 
forces, to the British lines, and thus secure an easy and de- 
cisive victory. Clive agreed, and prevailed on the demur- 
ring Committee of Council at Calcutta to risk the scheme. 
They saw the advantage of having a Subahdar whose acces- 
sion entirely depended on them, but they thought the plot 
unlikely to succeed. However, full of reliance on Clive's 
irresistable skill, they at last assented, and affairs were 
ready for immediate initiation, when an unexpected 
difficulty presented itself. Omichund had, at the last 
moment, announced that unless by a sealed treaty, he were 
assured of ^300,000, he would disclose the plot and its co- 
partners to Surajah Dowlah. The British had committed 
themselves ; now they were overreached ; and here seemed 
to be an insuperable obstacle projected on their path. Clive 
appears to have thought, that in diplomacy as in war, each 
stratagem was fair that proved successful ; and it appeared 
specially fitting that, by a retaliation of treachery, this 
traitorous trickster should be himself outtricked. He set 
himself to " counterplot the scoundrel," and was ready with 
a plan upon the moment He, with daring duplicity, pro- 
posed that two treaties should be got up ; one, on white 
paper, for Meer Jaffier, to be held to literally \ another, on 
red paper for Omichund, including the stipulated assurance, 
but not to be acted on in that respect at all. The council 
hesitated, and then yielded assent, and signed both treaties, 

Q 



242 Lord Clive. 

except Admiral Watson, who resolutely refused to sign any 
but one. The fascination of revenge upon " the villain in 
grain n was too alluring for Clive, and he forged the admiral's 
name to the other. This seems to us to have been both a 
blunder and a crime ; for it was still further destroying the 
confidence of the copartnery, and it would, as we think, 
have been better at once to rush into the thick of war, when 
everything urged to, and depended on, instantaneous action, 
and each would have been more anxious than another to 
risk the event of war than wait for a discovery. 

The treaties were forwarded, and all seemed right again. 
Clive wrote to the Surajah, twitting him with a breach of 
treaty, by intriguing with the French, and offering to refer 
his cause to the arbitration of three persons named, who 
were, of course, Clive's fellow-conspirators. He intimated, 
at the same time, that if they decided in his favour — which 
they were sure to do — he should demand reparation for his 
wounded honour, and a solatium for the unnecessary labours 
to which the navy and army were put by these unfriendly 
proceedings ; and as the rains were near, he would come 
himself for an immediate answer. The masked batteries 
were thus suddenly opened upon Surajah Dowlah before he 
had his own quite ready ; for the French had as yet only 
coquetted with his offers. There was no alternative. The 
sword alone could be the arbiter. 

Procrastination was not dive's fault ; and now impatience 
seemed to him a virtue. In opposition to the very elements, 
which, at the monsoon season, by rain and hurricane, render 
active operations to Europeans all but an impossibility, he 
set out — though fever, in a malignant form, was almost 
hourly diminishing his forces — on the 12 th of June. On 
the 19th, while they were encamped round the castle of 



The Field of Plassey. 243 

Cutwa, the weather broke upon them with unexpected and 
almost unexampled violence. Here, for the first time, he 
faltered ; the great crisis of his scheme had come, and the 
big consequences with the small means to work it out, struck 
him with a strong sense of their contrast. Failure in this 
was ruin to the British power, his own reputation, and the 
soldiery who adored him. He called, for the first and only 
time in his life, a council of war, on the 21st; and it, by a 
majority of one, advised delay. This was regarded as de- 
finitive. But hesitancy was, in this case, defeat, and after- 
reflection convinced Clive of the perils of such a policy ; 
for, in an hour thereafter, with audacious self-confidence, he 
had nerved himself to risk the contest. 

There seems a gleam of dare-devil nonchalance in this 
resolve to meet the gathering storm; for Surajah Dowlah 
had poured forth from Moorshedabad the very " pick and 
span" of his whole force — 40,000 infantry, well (though 
variously) accoutred; 15,000 cavalry, Rajpoots and Patans, 
soldiers from their infancy, well-equipped and horsed ; and 
fifty pieces of cannon, with a train of elephants. Clive had 
under him only 1000 Europeans, to whom danger was de- 
light, and toil but a heightening of the joy of victory; and 
2000 Sepoys, who had undergone the discriminating tran> 
ing of his singular soldierly skill. At daybreak of the 23d 
of June, on a plain near the village of Plassey, about 100 
miles north of Calcutta, these forces met. It was a perilous 
moment; Fate seemed to have enmeshed the soldiery of 
Clive completely. Drums, clarions, cymbals, and other 
noisy instruments awoke the morning in the Indian camp. 
The British, entrenched behind a rude mud fence around a 
grove, stood 

" Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm." 



244 Lord Clive. 

The Nabob's cannon boomed a salute of death amongst 
them, but they told it back with greater caution, certainty 
of aim, and efficacy of execution. Fire and counter-fire con- 
tinued for awhile, but no decisive movement was made ; 
each felt that his fate stood on a precipice's edge, down 
which the slightest rashness might precipitate it. Clive was 
wary, the Surajah timid, and neither made advances to the 
dazzling coil and recoil of close warfare. Fatigued by toil, 
and overpowered with care, Clive sank to sleep during the 
few moments of calm thus afforded him. Fear of treason 
in his camp, and inability to manoeuvre the magnificent 
show-zxmy he had assembled, seemingly paralysed the Sura- 
jah's mind. About noon Clive was awakened, and informed 
that the enemy were retreating. The day had overcast ; 
the enemy had neglected to " keep their powder dry ; " and 
their artillery had become useless. Clive gave the signal 
for a rush. The panic was in the foes' hearts already, and 
they fled in strangely-mingled confusion — all, save a few 
French soldiers, who, with dauntless daring, held their post 
in a redoubt until dislodged by Give's superior force. En- 
couraged by this stout resistance, some of the Nabob's 
troops rallied and returned ; but the British turned the guns 
they had taken against the re-assembling multitude, and they 
fled again more precipitately than before. 

Treachery had, no doubt, much to do with this hasty and 
unseemly retreat, begun by mid-da)^, before the armies had 
once been brought within the sword's-arm circle of each 
other ; but it had as truly an embarrassing effect upon the 
English ; for, — with the political Jesuitry of a conspiring 
Hindoo, holding aloof to take advantage of the turn events 
might take, — it was not until victory had fairly declared in 
favour of Clive, that his sly ally, Meer Jaffier, fulfilled his 




" Clive at once hailed him as Nabob of Bengal, and led him in honour to his 
tent." — Epoch Men, Page 245. 



The Masquerade of Fear. 245 

part of the treaty, and came over to secure what he had not 
ventured to win. Treason is a dubious game to play at, 
and that he felt full well, when Clive drew up a guard of the 
gallant 39th — the heroes of Plassey — to greet him on his 
corning \ for he started, and stammered out some sort of 
explanation of his apparent inattention to his agreement. 
Though the maxim, " qui s" excuse, s' accuse" is generally 
true, Clive at once, in accordance with the policy of expe- 
diency in this case adopted, hailed him as Nabob of Bengal, 
Behar, and Orissa, and led him in honour to his tent. 

Meanwhile, the Surajah had fled to his former capital, and 
there, in hesitation and fear, passed from thought to thought, 
from plan to plan. To no brave course could he commit him- 
self. He dropped from the palace window in a mechanic's 
dress, taking with him a casket of jewels, and escaped. He 
was ultimately betrayed, taken, and, with Meer Jaflier's con- 
nivance, strangled. 

Meer Jaffier was installed in great splendour, amid most 
pompous forms, by Clive ; and the chief articles of the 
treaty were then begun to be effected. At the meeting 
which took place regarding these, the outmatched Omichund 
was told how his own treachery had been surpassed, and 
under the influence of the disappointment to his avarice, 
reeled like a drunkard, and became a mere idiotic driveller 
about wealth and gems. Clive felt a momentary pang, but 
drugged his conscience at the time with the opiate gladness 
of success. A perfect shower of wealth fell upon the Com- 
pany and its servants by this transaction : ^800,000 were 
sent in a hundred boats from Moorshedabad to Calcutta. 
Clive had the fisc of Bengal opened, that he might take 
therefrom to his liking. The army and navy both shared 
handsomely in the gains, and even Admiral Watson came to 



246 Lord Clive. 

believe that Clive, despite his disrespectful forgery, was " the 
finest fellow in existence." 

It is impossible to manufacture kings ; and Clive, though 
he had successfully become the Warwick of India, could 
not confer upon his protege the potency and wisdom re- 
quisite to sustain a throne and maintain a kingdom. Meer 
Jaffier had neither the virtue nor talent which a sovereign 
ought to have ; he was little skilled in the rare art of wield- 
ing authority, and greatly deficient in that foresight, circum- 
spection, and intrepidity which is needed to consolidate a 
dynasty, and it was not long before Clive was compelled to 
execute all the essential duties of royalty. Excessive taxa- 
tion is a daring venture for a new government, if it is a 
growth from revolution, for the lesson of insurgency is soon 
and easily learned. The enormous pecuniary liabilities, for 
which Meer Jaffier had pledged his royal faith, rendered a 
summary operation on the purses of the wealthy Hindoos 
an inevitable necessity. The circumstances of Meer Jaffier 
soon became eminently critical ; the elements of danger and 
discord were active ; the genius of intrigue was busy ; con- 
spiracies became rife ; and he was less experienced in the 
management of men than in the manoeuvres of policy. 
Wheedling failed, force prevailed, the perilous moment 
came, and a rebellion arose ; but Clive suppressed it. An- 
other timely intervention on his client's behalf, Clive made, 
when Shah Alum, the exiled heir to the sovereignty of 
Delhi, attempted, with the help of the Viceroy of Oude, to 
oust Jaffier, and take his throne. He was besieging Patna 
when the hero of Plassey appeared, and at his coming the 
army fled. Such a proceeding gained Clive the favour of 
the imperial majesty of Delhi, who was pleased to nominate 
Clive to the dignity of an Omrah, and to invite him as u the 



The Chain of Events. 247 

high and mighty potentate, Colonel Sabat Jung," to his 
court. The honour he accepted ; the invitation he declined. 
He was rewarded for these services to Jaffier by the gift of 
the quit-rent of the Company's Zemin dary — equivalent to 
^30,000 per annum. 

While the consolidation of the Company's power in 
Bengal, the maintenance of Meer Jaffier on his throne, and 
the organisation of an efficiently drilled and thoroughly dis- 
ciplined native force, were occupying the constant activities 
of Clive, Bussy captured the English factory of Vizigapatam^ 
and swept the Circars like an uninterrupted pestilence. 
Count Lally, who had in the meantime arrived with the 
French forces, very foolishly suspended him, and substituted 
the Marquis of Conflans in his office, while he himself boldly 
and busily re-opened war in the Carnatic. He took Fort 
St David, Tangore, Arcot, with more than dramatic rapidity, 
and sat down before Madras. The small garrison there, 
however, were soldiers, and stood their ground till help 
came, and Lally abruptly raised the siege. Colonel Forde, 
detached by Clive, rounded into the Circars, regained aft 
losses there, and stormed Masulipatam, where the French 
were entrenched, so eagerly, as to cause 3000 to yield to 
less than 900. Clive was in raptures. 

Dangers thickened and crowded tumultuously upon each 
other. Give's policy was destined to yet another struggle. 
Part of his available forces were in Masulipatam, part in 
Patna, and part on the Coromandel coast; Forde was 
ailing ; and Colonel Eyre Coote was reinstating matters on 
the borders of Bengal. The Dutch at Chinsura, farther up 
the Ganges than Fort William or Chandernagore, saw them- 
selves not only outmatched but isolated, and began to 
bethink themselves that they had been too unambitious. 



248 Lord Clive, 

They drew recruits together ; and as rumours reached them 
of impending war between Holland and England, they 
courted Meer Jaffier, and brought round a squadron into 
the Ganges. Clive held to his policy of British supremacy; 
plied the Nabob incessantly with petitions, which gradually 
became commands, to prohibit the Dutch ships from passing 
Fulta, a village below Calcutta. He succeeded : the Dutch 
remonstrated. Clive lined the river with guard-boats, and 
garrisoned all the little forts on its banks. The Dutch were 
obstinate; and Clive ordered Colonel Forde, with 1200 
men, to intercept communications between the squadron 
and Chinsura. After a skirmish near Chandernagore, in 
which he drove back a force into Chinsura, he found that 
the men-of-war's men had landed, and were marching upon 
him. Forde had no orders of council to fight ; and wrote 
to Clive that this alone prevented him from attacking them. 
Clive, who was playing an after-dinner rubber at whist, 
merely took out his pencil and wrote on the missive sent, 
" Dear Forde, fight them just now, and Til send the order 
to-morrow." Forde fought at Bridona, while Clive managed 
a naval encounter on the Ganges, and the Dutch were 
thoroughly vanquished. Clive, however, throwing vindic- 
tiveness aside, saved Chinsura from pillage by the Nabob. 
The Dutch apologised ; offered to pay the expenses of the 
war ; and the hazard he had thus again dared declared in 
his favour. Conflans was defeated; Bussy was made a 
prisoner ; Lally's last hope was destroyed at the battle of 
Wadewash ; Pondicherry was razed to the ground ; and 
Surat was acquired from the Emperor of Delhi. Thus the 
French power was completely and irrecoverably broken. 
Count Lally was subsequently recalled, arrested, and tried 
as a traitor, who had sold Pondicherry, and dragged in un- 



The State of Hindostan. 249 

just ignominy, gagged, to the scaffold. The Dutch were per- 
fectly humbled. Bengal was almost a new creation among the 
powers of Hindostan ; Madras became the master-city of 
the Coromandel coast ; and Bombay was fast working up to 
the plenitude of power in the western border. Everything 
was in right trim ; the army trained ; officers educated in 
the policy of conquest ; the navy on friendly terms with the 
army ; all the traditions of warfare changed into the history 
of British triumphs ; subject nabobs ready to bow while 
they boasted ; and everywhere the alliance of Britain an 
object of desire. In India all was right : at home, however, 
the views of Eastern politics were anything but sound, and 
Give, determined to exchange the soldier's glaive for the 
statesman's glory, left India, 5th February 1760, to teach 
his policy to the Merchants' Company in Leadenhall Street, 
and to show them how, by the introduction of a superior 
civilisation, to endow themselves with w T ealth, widen the 
circle of their country's empire, promote the happiness of 
the millions of India, and, by a wise valour, to unite the 
scattered and discordant tribes of the East under a rule at 
once benign, paternal, solid, trustworthy, and energetic. 
He had given, in his own person, an example of devotion 
to a distinct policy; of inexhaustible resource and self- 
reliance ; of chivalrous enterprise, undaunted spirit, and 
then almost unparalleled daring, gallantry, and intrepidity. 
He had now to impress upon the masters of the fate and 
future of Hindostan the need for using a prudent sagacity 
in retaining their position and maintaining their rights. 



LORD CLIVE— THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA. 



SHE methods of observation and reasoning in poli- 
tics" had not specially engaged the attention of 
Clive ; but he seems to have inherited from 
nature that invaluable faculty which instinctively harmonises 
experience by theoretic thought, and suggests the means of 
overcoming those stupendous difficulties which inevitably 
arise when, the operations of warfare being ended, the need 
of providing for the permanent and progressive welfare of 
a people requires consideration and effectual elaboration. 
During the period of pupilage consequent on, and subse- 
quent to, conquest, 

"Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war ;" 

and these Clive did not forget. Well-fought fields and 
conquered provinces do not complete the list of the 
achievements of the Salopian ruler of Hindostan. Amidst 
the difficulties and dangers of a nascent empire, he initiated 
a policy, as well as inaugurated a rule ; and, fixing his acute 
mind on the laws of causation, which form or transform 
history, he deduced a suitable system of government, 
capable of being beneficially operative in the early exigen- 



Indians Conqueror an Irish Peer. 251 

cies of affairs, and throughout the after progress of the 
empire which his right hand had founded, and his energy 
had, for a time, sustained. Legislative measures could not, 
however, like a scheme of battle, be self-originated. To be 
permanent and effective, they must have all the guarantees 
of formal enactment. When the sword was sheathed, 
therefore, it behoved Give to supplant the provisional man- 
dates of a conqueror by the maturely considered regulations 
of a legislator. So soon, therefore, as in the autumn of 
1760 he landed in England, he endeavoured to effect this 
object by re-entering the House of Commons, and acquiring 
a large interest in the directorate of the East India Com- 
pany. A death-threatening illness interrupted, for a time, 
the pursuit of this thought- absorbing scheme. After a while, 
however, he rallied, and set to work again. The king, 
George TIL, had pointed him out as a proper teacher for 
any one who desired to learn " the art of war." Lord 
Chatham had spoken of him as a heaven-born general, and 
compared him to Frederick the Great. The Board of 
Directors bestowed upon him a sort of jealous adulation \ 
and at last — though he regarded the honour wholly inade- 
quate as a recognition of his services — he was raised, 15th 
March 1762, to the Irish peerage, with the title of Lord 
Clive, Baron of Plassey, and led to expect — though it is to 
be feared as the reward of political subserviency — at a 
future period the red ribbon of the British peerage. 

When the issue between Bute and Newcastle arose, Clive 
was almost, in so many words, asked to fix a price upon his 
services in the administration; but he says of himself, "I 
still continue to be one of those unfashionable kind of 
people who think very highly of independency, and to bless 
my stars indulgent fortune has enabled me to act according 



252 Lord Clive. 






to my conscience." He " thought it dishonourable to take 
advantage of the times," and so was treated with indiffe- 
rence. But the thought of British supremacy in India still 
nestled in his heart ; and though looked coldly on by the 
Government, he did not hesitate, in an emergency, to advise 
the ministry, unasked, regarding the chief points to be 
achieved in a treaty pending between France and England, 
in reference to India. His advice was taken, and France 
agreed to keep no troops in Bengal, or the Northern Circars. 
This much accomplished, Clive turned his attention to the 
management of the East India Company; but there the 
energy of envy had forestalled him. Mr Lawrence Sullivan, 
who had previously acted in a friendly manner with Clive, 
had taken umbrage at the letter — previously referred to — 
in which, addressing Mr Pitt, Clive had proposed the 
assumption of the Indian Empire by the British Govern- 
ment ; and Lord Clive had offended Lord Bute by voting 
against the peace of 1763. Bute wanted a tool to work his 
revenge with, and Sullivan was just in that frame of mind 
to take any means of thwarting Clive. Difference increased 
to animosity, and animosity led to a rupture, and the 
quondam friends became thereafter such enemies as only 
former friends can be. The Court of Directors became the 
arena of their strife; and it was waged with no want of 
intensity. The ministry favoured Sullivan, and Clive exerted 
every available stratagem to oppose him. " He that is a 
gamester, and plays often, must sometimes be a loser ;" and 
so it happened now. The test-hour came when Sullivan 
was proposed as chairman of the Directory. The ballot- 
box brought defeat to Clive, and the opportunity of a large, 
sweet morsel of revenge to Sullivan. The Court, at his 
instigation, confiscated the revenue derivable from Meer 



New Lamps for Old Ones. 253 

Jaffier's present — the jaghire of the territory south of Cal- 
cutta. Clive filed a bill in Chancery against it. The case 
was eminently unfair \ for Give's right rested on precisely 
the same ground as the Company's treaty, granting the 
original Zemindary — Meer Jaffier's gift. It is not enough 
to gain a victory, if we do not also make a right use of it. 
This was a knowledge Sullivan had not ; while Clive could 
compel defeat itself to be the instrument of his success. 
The dominant faction rioted in their hour of triumph, but 
it was short. Like a snow-ball held in the hand, the more 
firmly it was grasped the sooner it melted. 

The ascendant genius of Clive had scarcely been with- 
drawn from interference with the affairs of Bengal, than the 
mediocre minds in that presidency began to mismanage their 
trust, and abuse their power. Revolts were rife; peculation 
notorious; disorganisation extreme; and, worst and fatalest 
of all, dividends became impossibilities. Alarm prevailed : 
ruin was imminent ; safety — where was it to be found 1 The 
shopkeeping instincts of the Company immediately sug- 
gested Clive. In full court the proprietors besought the 
hero of Plassey to revisit the scenes of his former victories, 
to save his conquests and their capital. They offered him 
an official recognition of his right to the jaghire; to permit 
him to name his own committee of council, and the military 
officers who were to execute his commands; and to appoint 
him to the new and unexampled office of Governor-General 
and Commander-in-Chief of the whole of the Company's 
possessions in the East. So thoroughly do cowardice and 
fear make men traitors to themselves, that there seemed 
almost no concession too great for them to make, if asked. 
Clive modestly sought the undisturbed enjoyment of his 
jaghire for ten years — to be afterwards disposed of by an 



254 Lord Clive. 

arrangement between him and the Company: but he insisted 
on the deposition of Sullivan from the chairmanship, and 
refused, in opposition to every entreaty, to leave England 
on the commission entrusted to him, until the proprietors 
had completed their elections to the directorate, in which 
dive's friend, Mr Rous, was chosen chairman, vice Mr Sul- 
livan; and Mr Bolton, a member of dive's .party, was 
appointed to the deputy-chairmanship. Next year the 
Sullivanites, though supported by the Duke of Northumber- 
land and Lord Bute, were completely overcome \ but not 
until they had hived in their breasts a strong and fervid 
rancour against Clive. t 

On 4th June 1764, Clive, accompanied by Messrs Sumner 
and Sykes, set out, and it was April 1765 before the vessel 
in which he sailed entered the Hoogly. On the 3d of May 
he reached Calcutta, and that same afternoon he began his 
official duties. Strangely, indeed, had affairs been mis- 
managed, or unmanaged, since five years ago he left the 
empire of Britain in India not a possibility only, but a fact. 
That Clive had maturely reflected on the changes rendered 
necessary by the altered aspect of affairs in India, is proven 
by a lengthy, dispassionate, and statesmanlike letter which 
he addressed to the Court of Directors, 27th April 1764, 
while busied with preparations for his departure on the 
service to which he had been so unanimously elected. In 
this letter he fully develops the views he entertained, and 
expresses a determination, if properly supported by the 
home officials, to settle the Company's affairs in a moderate, 
safe, judicious, and permanent manner. He points out the 
want of temptation, on his part, to accept the trust; pro- 
mises to give up the Governors usual portion of commercial 
advantages ; proposes to accept a lower military commission 



Private Trade Trickery, 255 

than his old coadjutor, Lawrence — on whom he had gene- 
rously settled ^500 a year — and then claims that such help 
as he requires may be freely and promptly given \ and that 
such powers may be entrusted to him as may enable him to 
show " that the Company possessed the power and the will 
to protect" its native allies, "not only against foreign ene- 
mies, but each against the unjust aggressions of the other." 
We may be certain that on the outward voyage the great 
responsibilities resting on him would occupy much serious 
thought, and that he stepped ashore at Calcutta 

" Strong in will, 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield ; " 

ready to brave reproach, to inflict salutary castigation, to 
prefer public business to private interest, to bear up against 
that sullen discontent which is worse than open hostility, 
and to contend even with the despair of those whom he 
should require to foil, rebuke, restrain, dismiss, or punish. 
Impatient ardour at once impelled him to action, and in 
two days after his arrival he was prepared to initiate the 
proceedings which were to make his administration famous, 
with such sincere honesty of heart, as to be able to say, " I 
do declare, by that Great Being who is the searcher of all 
hearts, and to whom we must be accountable, if there must 
be a hereafter, that I am coma out with a mind superior to 
all corruption; and that I am determined to destroy these 
great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt." 

The Council was soon a scene of contention. Clive was 
imperious and intolerant of subterfuge or evasion, and at 
once proceeded to the investigation of the evils which had 
brought the affairs of the Company to a pass so disastrous. 
These arose primarily from what was called the " private 
trade," which originated thus — the East India Company 



256 Lord Clive. 

paid no transit dues on their goods, which were protected 
by a permit, or by their flag The chief revenues of the 
native princes were obtained from transit dues, and goods 
were consequently excised and examined at the several 
frontier lines of the Customs. The Company's servants 
had been in the habit of smuggling home and duty-paying 
goods from province to province, under the protection of 
these permits, and so realising speedy and enormous fortunes 
by defrauding the native princes of their dues, and being 
able to undersell the honest customs-paying trader; they 
had even gone the length of selling these permits to 
native traders, and thus succeeded in dishonestly trans- 
forming the revenues of the native princes into perquisites 
for themselves. Under these circumstances, the revenue 
of Meer Jaffier became so much decreased that he was 
unable to pay the large sums for which, on his accession, he 
had become bound to the Company. The Governor (Mr 
Vansittart) and his Council immediately conceived that 
they might play Clive's game with the Moorshedabad poten- 
tate, and entered into negotiations with Cossim Ali, his 
son-in-law, by which they agreed to depose Meer Jaffier, 
and instal him, if he would undertake to "convey" 
^200,000 to the Council, and to pension his father-in-law 
with such a sum as would enable him to live as a respectable 
private citizen. He agreed. Clive's protege was dethroned, 
and Cossim Ali enthroned. But as the "private trade" 
frauds continued and extended, Cossim Ali was unable to 
secure a revenue sufficient to enable him to discharge his 
liabilities, and was forced into collision with the parties to 
whom he owed his elevation. He remonstrated, the Council 
was inattentive, and the servants of the Company evaded 
or disobeyed the law. Discontent produced hostility, and 



The Hour and the Man. 257 

at length Cossim Ali authorised the use of violence for the 
protection of his rights and revenues. This was objected 
to, and Cossim Ali, determining not to be outbraved, 
resolved on abolishing the injustice by abolishing all transit 
dues, and changing his mode of taxation. The Council 
objected to this politic measure, demanded its annulment, 
and backed their demand by an embassage and a number 
of soldiers. On Cossim All's refusal, the English attacked 
and took the citadel of Patna ; but the Nabob immediately 
stormed the place, took the whole captive, and massacred 
them • then fleeing his capital, he retired within the terri- 
tories of the Viceroy of Oude. Meer Jaffier was hereupon, 
at a stipulated price, reinstated in his ancient dignity, and 
reigned uneasily, for a while inspired by the rumour that 
Clive was likely to return, This hope was never realised 
for him; on February 1765, he died, leaving his English 
benefactor a legacy of ^7 0,000. Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah, 
Meer Jaffier's son, was next inducted on the same terms as 
Cossim Ali, — although a prohibition of any such measures 
had reached the Council from the Directors, — and thus the 
Company's servants enriched themselves, while Leadenhall 
Street was distracted by lack of dividends. 

In this plight Clive found affairs on his arrival. The 
Council pleaded his own conduct as their precedent. Clive 
replied that his act was not self-planned and selfishly 
initiated, like theirs, but auxiliary to a scheme originating 
among the Bengalese themselves, and, besides, that it was 
experimental, and done at a time when there was "no law" 
against it, and, consequently, "no transgression" in it. 
They, unjustified by any policy except that of an " itching 
palm," had, in fact, manufactured a revolt for their own 
profit, effected it with the Company's forces, and at its charge, 

R 



258 Lord Clive. 

to increase their own hoards, heedless alike of the weal of the 
Hindustanee, or the wealth of their employers. The hot, 
imperious, and impetuous manner in which Clive scolded 
the offenders, they little relished ; and when they ventured, 
by insubordination, remonstrance, opposition, and counter- 
accusation, to justify, palliate, or defend their criminality, 
he at once suspended the recusants, and shipped them off 
to England, where they invested their means in the stock of 
the Company, that they might purchase revenge. By repre- 
hension, positive enactment, and summary dismissal, he 
arrested bribery, and thereafter set himself to undo the evils 
resulting from the private trade fraud. This he accom- 
plished by placing the right of granting permits in the hands 
of responsible officials. To compensate, in some measure, 
for the loss thus occasioned, Lord Clive projected and 
instituted a salt-tax, the proceeds of which were to be 
divided proportionately among the Company's servants; 
but this was afterwards objected to (though ultimately 
allowed) by the Directors. 

His next "administrative reform" was to lessen the num- 
ber of the members of the Council, and to require them to 
be resident in Calcutta. 

The far-reaching policy which had unfolded itself to him 
before the battle of Plassey was now ripe for another 
development. Britain was lord of the trade and revenues 
of India, as well as its military bulwark. The Nabob's 
government was only a pageant, and it would be well, he 
thought, that it should be now distinctly arranged that all 
real power should be ceded to the Company. He resolved 
to pension Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah into impotence ; to acquire 
the (dewanee) premiership of Bengal, and thus to gain sub- 
stantive and acknowledged power for Britain in India. 



British Dominion in the East. 259 

Aware, however, that the instant and open assumption of 
regal functions and a royal name in Bengal would have 
embroiled his country with various European nations, and 
with the surrounding Hindustanese, he employed high 
diplomatic tact in effecting his purpose, without outward 
offence to any of the usages of nations. In due form he 
secured from Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah a grant of the Dewanee ; 
concluded with Surajah-Dowlah, the vizier of Delhi, a treaty 
of peace ; and arranged with Shah Alum, the Emperor, for 
the permanent (nizamut) princedom in Bengal, Bahar, and 
Orissa, by Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah, and for the collection and 
management of the revenues, &c, by the British, as his 
agents. This great, good work, which officially inaugurated 
an essential epoch in human progress, and made Britain 
(potential) empress of the "Land of Desire," — this first 
legally ratified step in that grand march of conquest which 
has gone from the seas that bathe Cape Comorin to the 
shadows that fall from the Himalayas, and from the hither 
banks of the Indus to the farther borders of the Ganges, 
was taken with less pomp than the bridal of a merchant's 
daughter, or the opening of a slip of railway. He who had 
begun the conquest by the sword now closed it by the pen. 
On an ordinary table, in a bell-tent, set in an open field, 
the instrument which formed the earliest legal token of 
British dominion in the East was signed and ratified \ and 
well might he say of the vessel which bore the parchments 
of the treaty, " It will bring the Company the most impor- 
tant news they ever received." 

But he had a more difficult task yet to accomplish before 
he could quit the post his anxious fellow-proprietors had 
conferred on him. To prevent the civil servants from 
taking bribes, with the honeyed name of presents, was a 



260 Lord Clive. 

work that needed decision, firmness, and persistency ; but 
to attempt the diminishing of the emoluments of the mili- 
tary force, by whose aid the government was carried on, 
was one demanding hardihood, daring, and invincible reso- 
luteness. In this, too, he succeeded. Double ("batta") 
allowance, which had been given by Meer Jaffier, at Clive's 
suggestion, to induce men to enter the field, the soldiery 
had still continued to claim and receive; but as the 
expenses of warfare were now to fall upon the Company's 
exchequer, Clive resolved to discontinue it. It had been 
given as an expedient, not promised as a regular honorarium. 
He accordingly issued a proclamation, announcing that on 
and after ist January 1766, the right to double batta would 
cease. Intrigues immediately began. Remonstrances were 
showered in, and Clive was severely censured in private for 
his daring intermeddling. He replied mildly, but authorita- 
tively. The military officials, however, trained to think the 
sword resistless and supreme, believed themselves too im- 
portant and essential a constituent of the government to 
be dealt with in this high-handed way. They had been 
accustomed to inspire awe : were they now to be overawed 1 
A conspiracy was planned, to send in their resignations 
unless their demands were complied with. To have sub- 
mitted would have been to have given up civil government, 
and to have created a military tyranny. At this very time 
an irruption of a horde of Mahrattas was threatening Corah. 
Nothing daunted or disconcerted by the untoward aspect 
of affairs, Clive determined on bringing from Madras and 
Bombay as many officers as could be spared, and on 
making no terms with the mutineers, but rather on breaking, 
at whatever cost, the refractory spirit of the malcontents. 
" Secure is he who on himself relies." After immense effort, 



Reforms Effected, 261 

he succeeded in withdrawing the timid and misguided from 
the set, arresting the ringleaders, and after their trial and 
dismissal from the army, subduing the incipient revolution, 
which would have opened up the whole field of Indian 
warfare and diplomacy to France and Holland, besides 
impairing the whole efforts of his life's politics. The per- 
sons so detached from the service, of course, enrolled 
themselves at home among Give's enemies. 

The time occupied in the working out of those various 
reforms was little more than twenty months. In this period 
he had concluded advantageous treaties of peace with all 
the near native powers, had suppressed the private trade 
fraud, the corrupting bribery system, and the revolt in the 
army, and had re-arranged almost the whole polity of the 
Company's service, — scattering, meanwhile, seeds of sound 
thought in numerous letters to various officials regarding the 
future of India. Besides this, his example had been one 
of the utmost disinterestedness. He cheerfully left home, 
friends, and country, to grapple with hideous wrongs, and 
yet made and kept a determination to abjure every personal 
advantage if he could but accomplish the reformation he 
intended; so that he was able to write, — "With regard to 
myself, I have not benefited or added to my fortune one 
farthing; nor shall I, though I might by this time have 
received ^500,000 sterling." So far did he carry his 
scrupulousness on this point, that he bestowed the legacy 
Meer Jaffier had left him on the Poplar Hospital, then 
a refuge for decayed seamen belonging to the Company's 
service, but which, on receipt of Clive's donation, en- 
larged its constitution, so as to include the soldiery as 
well, and became the united Greenwich and Chelsea of the 
Indian service. 



262 Lord Clive. 

The active exertions of these few months completely 
prostrated Clive. He had been " tasking his heart, forgetful 
of his life and present good," so that by the close of October 
1766, his system was all but shattered; and for some time 
it seemed as if no to-morrow would dawn again for him. 

Letters from Leadenhall Street reached Clive in Decem- 
ber 1766, cancelling his salt-duty plan, disagreeing with him 
in the form of compensation to be made to the Company's 
servants, postponing the settlement of that point, yet 
imperatively commanding the discontinuance of the salt 
trade. Although Clive was complimented by the Directors 
for the integrity, good sense, and peremptory rapidity of 
his proceedings, he could not consent to undo the work 
which he had so painfully and laboriously arranged; and, 
before his departure, he perpetuated the salt trade grant 
till the 1st September 1767, by which time he hoped to be 
able to convince the Directory of the rightness and righte- 
ousness of his plan. These letters besought his lordship to 
retain office for another year; but from the state of his 
health he resigned the government into the hands of Mr 
Verelst, and on 18th January 1767, attended a meeting of 
the Select Committee for the last time. He was weak, and 
therefore handed his valedictory address to the secretary to 
be read. It was a state smanly paper, full of pithy and 
weighty maxims, the harvestings of a mind constantly active, 
continually observant, and having the rare intellectual 
instinct of prudent forethoughtfulness. He expressed in it 
his regret at leaving, constrained as he was only by the 
duty of preserving and prolonging life for other uses — 
exercised the power given him of naming officials to fill 
vacancies, and laid dovm general directions for the future 
management of affairs. Cautions against greedy haste in 



Valedictory Address. 263 

increasing the revenue, or in striving to steal a march on 
fortune by dishonest inattention to the Company's interest, 
were accompanied with promises to exert every energy to 
effect some satisfactory arrangement regarding the salt 
trade ; and his warnings against insubordinate contumacy 
were exceedingly wise. Towards the conclusion of his 
address he said, " I leave the country in peace. I leave 
the civil and military departments under discipline and 
subordination. It is incumbent on you to keep them so. 
. . . . If you do not make a proper use of that power 
with which you are invested, I shall hold myself acquitted 
as I do now protest against the consequences." The medi- 
ocre minds to whom these solemn words were spoken soon 
forgot their influence, if they had ever conceived their 
importance ; and the useful reforms, initiated by Clive, were 
soon replaced by disorganisation. 

At the close of January 1767, Clive embarked on board 
the Britannia, and having set sail from the Ganges, reached 
Portsmouth 14th July, and arrived in London next day. 
George III. and Queen Charlotte received him at. their 
levees, and the Court of Directors welcomed him with a 
profusion of thanks. And well, indeed, they might ; for to 
him, under Providence, the success of the Company was 
owing, and the glory of the British name had received 
through him such accessions in India as to be at once a 
talisman and a terror. In the pregnant summarisation of 
Lord Macaulay, — " From his first visit to India dates the 

renown of the English arms in the East From 

dive's second visit to India dates the political ascendancy 

of the English in that country From Give's 

third visit to India dates the purity of the administration 
of our empire." But 



264 Lord Clive. 

' ' The very noblest heart on earth hath oft 
No better lot than to deserve" 

and strange ubiquitous enmity clamoured and clangoured 
round the laurel-foliaged paths of Clive's past life. Ve- 
nality, made rancorous by his brave baying of the hate of 
the ill-doing; Envy, turning the keen eye of ungratified 
desire on his success ; Oppression, foiled and fooled in 
its endeavours ; Rapacity, convicted and punished by him 
in the unshrinking honesty of his determination; and 
Selfishness, arrested with its grasp unlawfully upon the chief 
prizes of Fortune, yoked their votaries together to overthrow 
the vigorous soul who, when men's footsteps were timid in 
the dark uncertainty of Indian affairs, planted a firm foot 
on the land, and, with a prescient eye-gauge, marked the 
time and means for rearing up an empire on the territory 
which then held but a few trading settlements, — who had 
transpierced the gloom of events, and illumined the future 
by the suggestion, initiation, establishment, and mainten- 
ance of a polity to which the after-time — even our own 
days — gave their sanction, and who had redeemed from 
blundering, dishonest mediocrity the honour of England 
and of Englishmen. 

The weapons and wounds of intrigue are often more 
deadly than those of war ; and they are much less easily 
opposed or cured. A tricky, strategic strife was opened 
against Clive in the Directorate. A vote of indemnity to 
the offenders he had dismissed was passed, and, though the 
grant of his jaghire was continued for ten years, it was 
carried by the narrow majority of twenty-nine. He was 
piqued at the slighting welcome given him ; he assumed a 
defiant and haughty tone, and in every possible manner, 
except becoming a candidate for membership in the Direc- 



Thankless Ingratitude. 265 

torate, strove to hold the East India Company to the 
furtherance of the views which he had matured in the courts, 
camps, writing offices, and council chambers of Hindostan. 
He felt and said that the Directors had " neither abilities 
nor resolution to manage such important concerns as are 
now under their care ;" and in consequence he treated them 
cavalierly, and they used him coldly. 

Clive was ordered by medical men to abstain from busi- 
ness, and to try the arduous toil of idleness — for to such a 
man so it appeared — as the only agency for regaining health. 
He was unable to exist in the quietness and quiescence 
they enjoined ; and though, as an experiment, he set out on 
a continental tour, he speedily returned, and rushed into 
the warfare of politics with all the irresistible energy of his 
disposition. Listless do-nothingism seemed to him a living 
death ; and he took his seat in Parliament as the leader of 
a few persons who, owing their places to him, were pledged 
to his opinions on Indian affairs. The king asked his 
views, and promised to forward them ; Grenville advocated 
his Eastern polity ; and it was determined to bring in a bill 
for the better regulation of the Company's affairs, and to 
arrange the part which the Crown should take in the main- 
tenance of British influence in the East. Great consterna- 
tion seized the Directorate, and unseemly vituperation was 
plenteously bespattered upon each other during the contest 
by the disciples of the rival schools of Indian politicians. 
This only served to make both ridiculous and hateful to the 
public. Clive, as the most conspicuous of the JVabobry, 
received more than a full share of obloquy and envy, and 
every effort was made by his enemies to increase this " evil 
report;" for the more they heightened popular indignation, 
the more they lowered his eminence and lessened his 



266 Lord Clive. 

influence. Clive desired to see the territorial sovereignty 
of India transferred to the British Crown, and wished the 
trading interest of the Company to be secured and respected ; 
but his enemies in Parliament and in the Directorate 
managed to frustrate this design, and a policy of procrastina- 
tion was adopted, leaving it for our own day to accomplish 
Clive's prescient scheme. On the appointment of Warren 
Hastings, who had had a seat with Clive in the Council, 
and generally coincided in his views, Clive forwarded a note 
of his policy, and a feeling and sensible letter of advice 
regarding the position the Company should assume and 
retain • but he was scarcely prepared for being treated as 
an enemy by that Company for whom he had sacrificed so 
much, as well as for and by whom he had acquired so 
much. Yet, on 7th January 1772, four and a half years 
after his return to England, the Company duly informed 
him, by a formal official note from the secretary, that he 
should be called to account for his conduct in India. On 
leave being granted to bring in an Indian bill, Sullivan 
covertly denounced Clive; but he replied boldly, with a 
characteristically grandiloquent account of his " manner of 
life from his youth up" in the Company's service. It was a 
vindication, not a defence. A select committee was ap- 
pointed to inquire into British affairs in India; and, its 
reports being published, India and Clive became the twin 
topics of debate. The public, knowing only one side 
imperfectly, held him in disrepute ; but he was installed 
Knight of the Bath, on 15th June 1772, and in the same 
year was made Lord-Lieutenant of his native county, Shrop- 
shire, and of Montgomery. He also laid his plan of Indian 
polity before the Cabinet. Lord North, by the advice of 
Chancellor Thurlow, contemplated the confiscation of the 



Defence in Parliament. 267 

whole estates of the several members, agents, and servants 
of the Company, past and present, as the only security for 
the discharge of the immense obligations of the Company ; 
but Government had approved its transactions, and could 
not rightly act in such an inconsistent way. At the end of 
a long contest, out of which Clive, after defending himself 
with intelligence, force, and pertinacity, came with flying 
colours, a vote of censure was proposed in Parliament ; but 
when it was put, every criminating expression was expunged, 
and it was declared that though Clive had enriched himself, 
he "did at the same time render great and meritorious 
services to his country." Having conquered in this matter, 
Clive took no part in the subsequent proceedings, which 
resulted in the granting of a new charter to the Company ; 
and though he continued to sit in Parliament, he refrained 
from interfering with its business. Government asked him, 
it is said, to conduct the American war; and Voltaire 
requested permission to use his lordship's papers to help 
him in the compilation of a history of the conquest of 
Bengal ; but the mainspring of his character — self-esteem — 
was broken, and life was hopeless. When, therefore, pain 
seized upon him with relentless gripe ; and the gnawing 
intensity of reflection upon a life misunderstood, a career 
maligned, and the plan, purpose, and foremost thought of 
his being, indefinitely postponed, if not set aside, increased 
it, *his mind wavered and lost balance ; for the pivot of 
right action — reason — had failed, and the sad distemper of 
the nerves — occasioned by the over-frequent use of opium, 
as a palliative of pain of mind and body — made him feel 
" a-weary, a-weary of the world." An aimless, exertionless, 
unhonoured, if not dishonoured, existence he could not 
brook; and on the 2 2d of November 1774, he used a 



268 Lord Clive. 

penknife for his own destruction, and by the hand that 
wielded " the rod of empire," he lay self-vanquished and 
cold in unexpected death. 

The mighty heart, whose pulses had beat to so much of 
the glorious music of life, is pulseless and still ; the soul, to 
whose view the grand panorama of India's future had been 
so vividly unfolded, is gone ; the affections, which twined 
themselves so seriously and tensely round the races of Hin- 
dostan, are .calm and cold ; and the politic brain, whose 
prescient schemes did so much for the greatening and 
widening of the dominion of Britain in the East, has ceased 
to concoct subtle and complicated plans of Oriental law 
and government. But the lessons of his life remain, and 
the impulses which it impressed on circumstances go sweep- 
ing down the tides of time, and touch into shape the outlines 
of the future. Let us venture to sum up a few of these. 

We note, first, His constant faith in the vitality of effort. 
Second, The thoughtful considerateness with which he 
formed his plans, and the daring undauntedness with which 
he executed them. Third, The persistent unity of effort he 
secured by holding to one great, well-matured idea — British 
dominion in India. Fourth, The loveable heroism of his 
nature, and the (with that one exception, when he stooped to 
win success by trickery) stern honesty of his character. Fifth, 
His enthusiastic and friendly acknowledgment and encour- 
agement of others, — his ready helpfulness to any one who 
required aid. Sixth, The width of scope with which his eye 
glanced at events, to trace their farthest visible bearings on 
the future. Seventh, His decision of character and resolute 
unyieldingness, when his convictions were once formed. 
Eighth, The constancy with which he kept in view the need 
for inducing a higher, i.e., a moral civilisation upon India, 



Influences of his Life. 269 

and the consistency of his patriotism in aiming at the great- 
ness and glory of his fatherland. Ninth, The healthy tone of 
his patriotism — its nationality and impersonality. How 
unlike that of the young Corsican, who, at the time of Olive's 
death, may have been playing the usual pranks of boyhood 
in the Rue Charles, in Ajaccio, un wee ting of the destiny that 
waited him! How like that of his own great — though 
specially trained — successor, who dreamed little of Assaye 
or Waterloo as he paced with his governess the gardens of 
Dangan Castle in Meath, when the news-sheets of the day 
brought tidings of Give's suicide ! There is one characteristic 
we wish he had possessed, but which we dare not predicate 
of him, — the noble Christian life that he exemplified. Alas ! 
he lived in an age when men scoffed at the Saviour's name, 
and, while they idolised the hero of a day, left the Hope 
and Succour of the world without a temple in their hearts. 
That he felt with genuine ardour the faith which puts heart 
into a man's life, and moves and sustains when all ordinary 
motives and ordinary supports fail, it were hard to deny ; but 
we have little proof that he walked by " The True Light." 
He was one of those who in his own age sowed the seed of 
the world's hereafter, and he has linked himself to history as 
one of those great souls who have initiated an epoch, and 
who, in those moments that try men, hold unflinchingly 
by the banners of Progress and Beneficence. 



James Watt — The Utilisation of 
Steam. 

A.D. 1 736- 1 8 19. 



" The fables of Old Giants realised, 

Behold, in this unsleeping sinewy slave ! 

He toils in Earth's deep mines, o'er Ocean's wave, 
Unswerving and unfaltering, unsurprised. 

Whether through barren heath and mountain gorge 
He 's bidden haste ; or sent to weave and spin 
Amid the populous City's swarming din ; 

Or call'd to wield his hammer at the forge, 
His throbbing heart with all obedience hies 

To do its part in Life's industrial plan ; 
Fatigueless at his task he swinks, nor sighs 

To work the will of his weak master, Man. 
To thee, be thanks, O Watt ! with genius fraught, 
By whom this Cyclops has been tamed and taught. " 

J. A. E. MulZens. 



" After years of intellectual toil and mental anxiety, James Watt 
brought the steam-engine to such perfection as to make it the most pre- 
cious gift that man ever bequeathed to his race." — Sir D. Brewster, 



M Watt, the man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying 
our national resources to a degree, perhaps, even beyond his own stu- 
pendous powers of calculation and combination, bringing the treasures 
of the abyss to the summit of the earth ; giving the feeble arm of man 
the momentum of an Afrite ; commanding manufactures to arise, as the 
rod of the prophet produced waters in the desert ; affording the means 
of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man, and of 
sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of 
Xerxes."— Sir Walter Scott. 



THE UTILISATION OF STEAM. 



P|^|TEAM was, for long ages, one of the waste products 
^£M\ of nature. It is scarcely a century since the 
lp||j| means of utilising it were discovered and invented ; 
and it was yoked in servitude to that mighty and manifold 
series of mechanical agencies which augments the energies, 
increases the comforts, and promotes the improvement of 
the human race. The numerous applications of steam to 
the useful purposes of life ; the various modes in which it 
can exert a ministry of beneficence ; and the many differing 
methods in which it enlarges the sphere of human influence, 
and fits itself in, so directly, to the several purposes of an 
advanced civilisation, could scarcely have been dreamed of 
by those who watched the rising vapours of the mora on the 
banks of the green old Nile, on Corinth's shores, or beside 
the empire-margined Tiber ; and, indeed, that it ever could 
become the subservient serf of man, and execute not only 
his bidding, but his work, does not, on an d priori view of the 
case, seem very probable even to ourselves. Yet the sub- 
stance of that same retinue of clouds which girds the sun 
" With pomp, with glory, and magnificence," 

or forms that "pestilent congregation of vapours" which 
casts its gloom over city and town, as well as hamlet, is, in 



274 James Watt. 



great part, a similar aeriform mass to that whose force 
bridges the ocean-spaces between continents; speeds the 
engine with current swiftness over the iron-lines which 
link factory-centre to metropolitan populousness, and 
swinks with almost exhaustless efficacy, as the generator of 
motions, forces, and means by which the capacity of man 
has been multiplied to an indefinable extent. 

The progress of that marvellous thought by which the 
industrial power of humanity is so wondrously augmented, 
from the earliest observation of some reflective man upon 
the elasticity of vapour, to the moment in which steam was 
utilised by the genius of Watt, would, if rightly told, form 
the strangest of " the fairy tales of science," and would be a 
historic truth far surpassing the sublimest reach of fiction. 

Man's progress in the utilisation of steam seems to have 
been very slow. Hero of Alexandria (cir. 120 B.C.,) in a 
work " On Pneumatics," describes two machines of his own 
invention, in which a rotary motion was conveyed in the 
one case by the emission of heated air, and in the other 
by the immission and emission of steam. The latter is the 
first known attempt to effect the production of motion by 
the employment of elastic vapour. It was, however, used 
only as a toy, and does not seem to have been applied to 
any utilitarian purpose. This plaything is the original of 
that distinguished " species " of mechanism now known as 
the steam-engine. It was for ages a curiosity of mechanics. 
Nor till the stir and ferment of the Reformation does it ap- 
pear to have entered into the human mind that the spirals 
of vapour rising from heated water could become weariless 
labourers for humanity ; and then it was more an outburst 
of rhetoric than a scientific appraisement of facts. A 
volume of sermons by Mathesius, published at Sarepta in 



. 



Steam and its History. 275 

1563, contains a suggestion of such a possibility. About 
thirty years thereafter, the Alexandrian toy was taken as a 
model for a mechanical turnspit. Baptista Porta in Italy, 
and David Rivault in France, occupied themselves as stu- 
dents of the powers, qualities, uses, &c, of steam. Indeed, 
the need of some new industrial energy appears in the early 
part of the seventeenth century to have been simultaneously 
suggested to several minds. Hence originated the many 
experiments on heat, air, gases, motion, &c, which are re- 
called to us by the mere mention of the names of Galileo, 
Descartes, Torricelli, Wallis, Roemer, and Leibnitz; Ste* 
vinus, Newton, Castelli, and Guericke ; De Caus, the 
Marquis of Worcester, Huygens, and Boyle. 

A century of tentative approaches — many successive and 
some parallel — were made to the solution of the question, 
each supplying some preliminary to its successful accom- 
plishment, none effecting the required result. The know- 
ledge of the qualities and properties of the materials was 
requisite before contrivance could efficiently act and super- 
add to nature such appliances as would fit in with her 
divinely-ordained activities, and cause the ordinary action 
of the elements involved to achieve a human purpose in 
harmony with the ever-abiding designs of the One. For 
this is the great law of discovery — to bring human concep- 
tions into harmony with the Divine plan ; and whensoever 
that is accomplished, the means of touching to their required 
uses the ordinary elements of nature become self-evident. 
The science of dynamics might also be said to have had its 
origin in the desire to know the laws of force. The Ber- 
nouilhs, Varignon, Herman, Euler, Segner, and Boscovich, 
are the chief names to which the scientific correlation of sta- 
tics and dynamics may be traced. And though the names 



276 James Watt. 

of Newton, D'Alembert, Venturi, Deluc, &c., may not be 
omitted from a catalogue of the assistants in the discovery of 
the true theory of the steam-engine, this distinction belongs, 
perhaps, more justly to the originators of a true theory of 
heat. Without neglecting to notice the efforts of the Floren- 
tine academicians, we may mention the thermometers of 
Fahrenheit and Reaumur as tending much to the consolida- 
tion of this science. But perhaps the greatest achievements 
in the investigation of the theory of heat were made by Drs 
Cullen and Black, professors in the Glasgow University, the 
latter of whom was a patron of the obscure though ingenious 
mechanician by whom steam was first utilised. Dr Black 
expounded the theory of latent heat ; Scheele introduced 
the idea of the radiation of caloric : and all these various 
efforts combined, led to the successful and systematic appli- 
cation of the laws of heat to the furtherance of the mecha- 
nical arts, and ultimately to the actual construction of the 
most marvellous and multiform mechanism of modern days 
— the steam-engine. 

Sir Samuel Moorland, master of mechanics to the King 
of England, made some experiments upon the elasticity of 
steam before 1682, and projected a scheme for raising water 
by the force it afforded. Dr Denys Papin, a native of Blois, 
who had assisted Boyle in many of his experiments, and who 
thus had his attention directed to the grand mechanical 
problem of that time, published in the Acta Eruditorum 
of Leipsic, in 1685, several communications, which show 
that he had attained a clear idea of the nature of the 
material facts upon which the construction of a steam-engine 
depended, and shortly afterwards made some steps towards 
the construction of such a mechanism. Steam was now well 
known to be capable of acting as a motive power; the 



Early Steam Mechanism. 277 

proper applicability of its force to useful purposes was the 
great difficulty. To Papin we owe the invention of the 
digester and the safety-valve. Captain T. Savery, about 
1698, invented an engine, in which steam was employed to 
give a force for the draining of mines or fens, for the pro- 
pulsion of water through mansions and palaces, and for 
pumping it from ships. Amontons, in 1699, proposed a 
fire-wheel; but this, though ingenious in conception, was 
liable to many derangements, and was found impracti- 
cable. 

Dr Andre Dalesme, in 1705, exhibited at Paris an engine 
for raising water by the force of steam ; and Leibnitz, after 
examining Savery's mechanisms in England, sent a sketch 
of one of them to Papin, who renewed his attempts to make 
an effective working engine. Upon the basis of Savery's 
machine, Thomas N ewe omen and John Cawley — the former 
a blacksmith, and the latter a glazier in Dartmouth — con- 
structed an engine upon Papin's principle of a piston and a 
condensing process, using, however, Savery's mode of creat- 
ing a vacuum by cold affusion, for which they were led by 
an accident to substitute the method of throwing a jet or 
stream of cold water into the cylinder. Further improve- 
ments were made upon this engine by Desaguliers, Henry 
Beighton, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, John Smeaton, and others, 
but none of these engines employed the direct force of steam 
as their motive power, and none of the improvers made any 
alteration in or advance upon the principles of steam mechan- 
ism. These engines, therefore, have been designated, for dis- 
tinction's sake, atmospheric steam-engines. All the elements 
of a successful adaptation of steam to industrial purposes 
might now be said to have been gathered together, but, like 
the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision, they required a Divine 



278 James Watt. 

breath to give them the life of usefulness. At length came 
the hour, and with the hour 

1 1 The master hand 
That seized the fire-flame, like Prometheus old, 
And, out the black shaft, through the grassy land, 
Dragg'd up the iron from earth's rocky hold, 
And gave command to both. Ye shall not rest 
Till striving man is from work's bondage free. 
Go, steam ! and do man's hest ; from east to west, 
Ye wheels of iron, at his bidding flee ! " 

The following resume of the chief steps through which the 
invention had by this time passed will be found not only- 
intelligible and interesting, but authoritative : — " S. de Caus 
made steam act to raise water ; Worcester performed this 
operation in a more regular and mechanical manner \ Papin 
used the condensation of steam, and, through that, the 
atmospheric pressure, as well as the direct expansive force, 
and he worked the engine by a piston ; Savery condensed 
by refrigeration, instead of the mere absence of fire, but 
did not use the atmosphere ; Newcomen used the jet for 
condensing, and the atmosphere for pressure, but did not 
use the direct force of steam ; Desaguliers introduced the 
safety-valve \ Beighton and Smeaton improved the mechan- 
ism ; Dalesme needs not to be mentioned, as we are not 
informed what plan he executed, but he certainly made no 
step himself. If the direct force of steam, as well as atmo- 
spheric pressure, had been both employed, with the jet of 
cold water, the safety-valve, and the contrivance for regu- 
lating the supply valves, a far better engine than any ever 
known before the time of Watt would have been produced, 
and yet nothing whatever would have been added to the 
former inventions, they would only have been combined 
together. The result of the whole is, that one of the greatest 



The Genealogy of the Steam-engine. 279 

theoretical steps was made by Papin, who was, during a long 
period, little commemorated ; and that Savery and New- 
comen, who have been by many called the inventors, were 
the first, of all the ingenious and useful persons whose suc- 
cessive improvements we have now recorded, to apply the 
steam-engine to practical purposes. France has thus pro- 
duced the man who, next to Watt, may be regarded as the 
author of the steam-engine; of all Watt's predecessors, 
Papin stands incontestibly at the head; but it is almost 
certain that he never actually constructed an engine. 
Though the engine of Savery was of considerable use in 
pumping to a small height, and indeed has not entirely 
gone out of use in our own times ; and though Newcomen's 
was still more extensively useful, from being applicable to 
mines, not only had no means ever been found of using the 
steam power for any other purpose than drawing up water, 
but even in that operation it was exceedingly imperfect and 
very expensive, insomuch that a water-power was often pre- 
ferred to it, and even a horse-power in many cases afforded 
equal advantages. The great consumption of fuel which it 
required was its cardinal defect ; the other imperfection 
was its loss of all direct benefit from the expansive force of 
the steam itself. That element was only used in creating a 
vacuum, and an air-pump might have done as much, had it 
been worked by water or by horses. It was, in the strictest 
sense of the word, an air and not a steam-engine/'* When 
the progress of invention had proceeded thus far, " the 
genius of Watt, guided by sound judgment, and urged by 
unremitting application, effected in less than forty years a 
complete change in the power of mechanism." 

* Lord Brougham's Works, vol. i.. Lives oi the Philosophers of the 
Time of George III., article, "Watt," p. 30. 



280 James Watt. 

In a small, comfortable cottage at the east end of the 
south side of Dalrymple Street, in the old burgh town and 
seaport of Greenock — of the Council of which he was 
treasurer — dwelt Mr James Watt, shipwright, builder, and 
general merchant, a clever pursuer of many handicraft arts, 
and a successful conductor of such commercial speculations 
as the state of trade at that time afforded opportunity for. 
His wife was Agnes Muirhead, a handsome, well-informed, 
and good-tempered woman, in whose veins ran the " bluid " 
of the "lairds of Lachop." To this honest pair there were 
born five children, of whom three, two sons and a daughter, 
died in infancy, and the latest born, John, was lost at sea 
in the twenty-fourth year of his age — only seven years after 
the death of his mother, in 1755. Their fourth child was 
the James Watt to whom 

' ' Nature disclosed the artful plan 
To mould the mist into Leviathan." 

He was born 19th January 1736. He was sickly in child- 
hood, and was an object of much anxiety, for the parents, 
tried by former losses, almost despaired of training him 
through the perils of boyhood, or of his ever attaining to 
man's estate. The delicate boy, though kept long from 
school, was of an observative and thoughtful turn of mind, 
and found in the shop and workshops of his father, as well 
as in the splendid scenery of land-locked sea and towering 
mountain near him, multitudes of " object lessons," which 
excited his intelligence, quickened his aptitudes, and, by 
gratifying his curiosity, increased his thirst for information. 
He made teachers of all he saw, and often made himself 
master of their secrets His mother taught him to read, his 
father imparted to him the rudiments of writing and arith- 



Boyhood and School-time. 281 

metic. He was carefully drilled in his lessons, though not 
harassed with them, and though far outstripped in school- 
learning by many of the burly youngsters who jibed the 
feeble home-pet, he had an education of the feelings and 
senses seldom acquired in those old days of stern catecheti- 
cal discipline and classical drudgery. Marvellous stories 
are often told of " the boyhood of great men/' as if, in their 
early years, their future eminence had been foreshadowed. 
In the biography of James Watt these are not wanting ; nor 
do we think that they are, in this case, apocryphal. It would 
be impossible for us, however, in a mere sketch, such as this 
must be, to criticise minutely the tales of his self-suggested 
discovery of geometrical truths, of his early acquaintance 
with algebraic formulae, of his precocious powers of calcula- 
tion, and of inventing and constructing philosophical toys. 
It must suffice us to say that such stories seem to be 
authentically narrated, and appear to be credible, for the 
boyhood of Watt was different in its conditions from that 
of the majority of children in his day. 

After the anxious expenditure of a mother's care, and the 
faithful patience of a father's affection, the boy's health 
seemed to warrant his attendance at a public school, there 
to be braced by competition, and fired by contact with his 
age-fellows. In the commercial school of Mr M'Adam he 
increased his knowledge of penmanship and accounts; 
under the learned and excellent Robert Arrol, Master of the 
Burgh Grammar School of Greenock, he acquired a fair 
acquaintance with Latin, and a " little Greek ; " while with 
a relative of his own, John Marr, he studied mathematics 
with zeal and purpose, with a loving diligence which won 
his master's and his parents' admiration. Though not a 
frequent companion in the giddy joys of schoolboy life, he 



282 James Watt. 



was a great favourite with his comrades, on account of his 
mechanical ingenuity, and his rare power of story-telling, 
a power which he exercised with an imaginative fertility and 
a fascination of style more delightful to his hearers than the 
daily-drilled narrative of the ^Eneid, the Homeric " Tale of 
Troy divine," the verses of 

" Him who left half-told 
The story of Cambuscan bold," 

or the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of the "Faery 
Queen e." Scotland has always been famed for legend and 
tradition ; and in Watt's youth, when the Jacobite rebellion 
was an actuality, — when "bonnie Prince Charlie" really 
fought at Falkirk, feasted in Holyrood, failed at Culloden, 
and fled thence a fugitive to France, — there can be little 
doubt that mother-told tales of the stern and sturdy wars 
of the olden times were frequent at a fireside graced by a 
female descendant of the ballad-famed Muirheads ; or that 
Watt, having been thrilled himself by the magic of story, had 
learned to use its witcheries on others. 

The home-training, to which Watt was subjected, was 
judicious though indulgent. Manliness and morality were 
carefully inculcated, and strictly, but with enlightened affec- 
tion, enforced. The boy grew up sincere, truthful, honest, 
persevering, intelligent, and thoughtful. His uncle, John 
Muirhead, often united with the elder Watt in commercial 
transactions ; the greatest cordiality prevailed between the 
brothers-in-law ; and James Watt had the privilege of fre- 
quent intercourse with his uncle's family, both in Glasgow 
and at Killearn, on the banks of Loch Lomond. In 
Glasgow, too, he had another influential relative, viz., 
George Muirhead, Professor of Humanity in the University 
there and one of the editors of the magnificent FouhY 



. 



The Value of a Thought. 283 

"Homer" (1756-8.) In his fourteenth year, a copy of 
Gravesande's " Elements of Physics" came into Watt's 
hands, and fired his mind with its destined ambition. He 
became an experimenter in chemistry, mechanics, electricity, 
&c, and so cultured in himself the capacities of researchful 
observation. This phenomenon-watching inquisitiveness 
did not meet his aunt, Mrs Muirhead's, notions of utilita- 
rianism, and she scolded him after this fashion : — " James 
Watt, I never saw such an idle boy. Take a book, and 
employ yourself usefully. For the last hour you have not 
spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that kettle and 
put it on again ; holding now a cup and now a silver spoon 
over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, and 
catching and connecting the drops of hot water that it falls 
into. Are you not ashamed of spending your time in this 
way'?" Ah, good old dame! the boy has been indulging 
in a glorious dream. The boy-thought is a new heaven-seed 
implanted in humanity, to release vital force from e very-day 
taskwork, and to produce a substitute for much of the most 
exhausting bodily labour in the manufactory and the mine, 
on the roadway, and across the sea ; to supply unskilled 
labour by art, that so skilled labour may henceforth be the 
lot of thinking man. The boy's idle hour has potencies of 
usefulness in it incomputable by the meagre arithmetic of 
every-day existence ; for there is in it — as there is at the 
same time in the mind of a Glasgow professor of morah- — 
a revision of all old notions on " The Wealth of Nations." 

The facilities afforded by his father's business for acquiring 
a knowledge of the construction and uses of telescopes, 
quadrants, and other instruments of a similar sort, quickened 
in Watt's mind the love of geometrical, astronomical, and 
optical studies, and at last inclined him to choose, as his 



284 James Watt. 



. 



own pursuit in life, the manufacture of philosophical instru- 
ments. The need for a decision on that subject was not 
forced upon him early. He was in the seventeenth year of 
his age when some business reverses of his father's made it 
advisable to provide himself with some means of gaining a 
subsistence. He was apprenticed to a mathematical instru- 
ment maker in Glasgow ; but his own ill health, the death 
of his mother, and his desire to get a proper training in his 
business, unitedly led him to break his indenture, and to set 
out for London, whither he went, under the care of his 
former teacher and cousin-german, John Marr. After a few 
difficulties, and a little hopelessness, James Watt, on agreeing 
to pay a premium of ^21, and give his labour during the 
period of servitude, became the pupil, but not the apprentice, 
of John Morgan, mathematical instrument maker, in Finch 
Lane, Cornhill, for one year. His father's poverty made 
him determine on eating only the bread of industry. He 
worked early and late, with constancy and goodwill, and 
strove to make himself as little as possible burdensome at 
home. He jobbed at overhours, and improved both his 
finances and his skill by the efforts he made, though he 
injured his health, and gave additional poignancy to the 
headaches to which he had been subject from boyhood, 
besides adding to them rheumatic and nervous pains. In 
the autumn of 1756 he returned to his native land; and 
having supplied himself with a kit of superior tools, and a 
copy of Nicholas Biron's treatise on "The Construction 
and Use of Mathematical Instruments," — translated by a 
self-taught Scottish mathematician, Edward Stone, — sought 
an outlet for his energies. Fortune, in this, favoured him. 
A merchant of Jamaica, Alexander Macfarlane, having died 
in 1755, bequeathed his collection of mathematical instru- 



Obstacles Overcome. 285 

merits to the Glasgow University \ and on the suggestion of 
Dr Moor, Professor of Greek, and Dr Dick, Professor of 
Natural Philosophy, Watt was requested to unpack, arrange, 
clean, and repair them. 

He thereafter attempted to establish himself in business 
in the city of Glasgow, but was opposed in this scheme by 
the members of the incorporated trades, who, because he 
was neither a burgess, a regularly-trained tradesman, nor 
married to the daughter of any one possessed of the freedom 
of the city, forbade his opening a workshop or warehouse 
within the burgh bounds. The University came to his 
help, and gave him the use of a small room within the col- 
lege precincts, next the apartments occupied by the Messrs 
Foulis, printers to the University. Watt was appointed 
mathematical instrument maker to the University; and 
here, by a variety of miscellaneous exertions of acquired 
neat-handed n ess and inborn intelligence, he managed to 
make a moderate income. Fiddle-making, ornamental 
nick-nackeries, organ-building — though he was entirely des- 
titute of " musical ear" — employed the spare time of the 
modest and studious young man, who made and repaired 
the mechanical contrivances by which grave professors 
exemplified to sage students the modes of operation in 
which nature delighted. The city was full of James Watt's 
reputation as a handicraft workman, and an intelligent 
artisan. The professors of the University — all men of note 
in their departments — encouraged the young mechanician, 
and the students loved and respected him. Small, steady 
gains gave him the hope of a living ; and by entering into 
partnership with John Craig, who advanced a small capital 
in lieu of skill, he increased his chance of making " ends 
meet" This commercial companionship lasted from 1759 



286 James Watt. 



ies 



till 1765, in which year John Craig died. In 1763 James 
Watt considered himself capable of starting housekeeping 
on his own account, and succeeded, in July of that year, in 
persuading his cousin, Miss Miller, whose father was the 
chief magistrate of Calton, an eastern suburb of Glasgow, 
to share his small home and his large hopes. This event 
probably gave emphasis to his desire of doing something 
more likely to win bread, enjoyment, and fame, than the 
trade of the artisan afforded opportunity for. 

He had the art of waiting without idling, and his interest- 
ing activity of thought made him an acquisition to college 
society. Adam Smith, the political economist; Simson, 
the geometer \ Black, the discoverer of latent heat ; Moor, 
the Grecian ; Muirhead, the humanist and orientalist ; John 
Millar, the historian and jurist ; Clow, the logician [?] ; 
Principal Leechman ; Anderson, the physicist ; Robert and 
Andrew Foulis, the printers, &c, then formed the chief mem- 
bers of the literary society of the city, and they found in 
Watt a man of congenial intellectuality and taste. These 
men gave his mind employment and aim ; they encouraged 
his inventive genius, and spurred on his ambition. The old 
dreams of greatness which as a lad had glorified his life, 
though gaining him the chastisement of his aunt's disappro- 
bation, began to play about his brain, and his little shop — 
now in the Saltmarket — was the scene of many experiments 
for increasing the home-income. 

Just as his mind was all alert for some new stroke of 
money-making ingenuity, the chance came. During the 
session of 1763-4, John Anderson, who had between 
1756-60 occupied the chair of Oriental Languages, then 
vacated by Watt's relative, George Muirhead, but who was 
now T Professor of Natural Philosophy, required to illustrate 



The Beginning of Success. 287 

his prelections on elastic vapours by experiments with a 
model of Newcomen's engine. The instrument belonging 
to the University broke down, and it was sent to Watt for 
repair. His mind had been reverting of late pretty fre- 
quently to the subject of steam. He had held several 
conversations about it with John Robison, then a student, 
afterwards Professor of Chemistry in the University of 
Glasgow, and, at a later period, occupant of the chair of 
Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh. This opportune and 
suggestive reminder, aided as it was by the recent study of 
Dr JohnT. Desagulier's " Experimental Philosophy," (1734,) 
the translation of Gravesande, already mentioned, and B. F. 
de Belidor's " Science of Engineering," (1729,) and "Hy- 
draulic Architecture," (1739-1753?) was through pressure of 
business almost becoming effectless. He began to repair it 
"as a mere mechanician," he says, when he noticed that, 
though apparently all right, " its boiler could not supply it 
with steam" enough to keep it working more than a few 
strokes at a time. This anomaly between means and pur- 
pose, however, astonished his persistent curiosity, and he 
who had studied the science of harmonics that he might 
construct an organ, and in his impatience to be a thorough 
master of mechanics learned the then rarely acquired 
languages of Germany and Italy, was not likely to spare 
pains or labour to discover the reason of this faultiness in 
the simplest and most powerful engine that had hitherto 
been constructed. The determination to find a reply to 
this imperatively recurring — why?- — formed at once the crisis 
of Watt's life, and the first step towards the emancipation 
of human industry. " Everything," says Professor Robison, 
"became to him a subject of new and serious study — every- 
thing became science in his hands." In a mind so prone 



288 James Watt. 

to reasoning, and so sedulously ambitious of success, it is 
not to be wondered at that " this little job of the model 
came opportunely in his way, and immediately took up his 
whole attention." It would be useless and unprofitable to 
enumerate the many beautiful though abortive specimens of 
ingenuity which, with a rare facility and fertility of resource, 
he produced during the period of experiment which preceded 
the realisation of his ideal. He tested the theory of heat, 
investigated anew the properties of steam and other elastic 
vapours ; he employed himself in chemical researches, in 
inquiries regarding atmospheric air and its powers, and in 
the careful manipulation of glass, metals, &c, so far as they 
seemed likely to contribute to the end he had in view. 
Then he read voraciously, avariciously, and gloated over 
each newly-gained fact like an alchemist over his crucible. 
Nor was this insatiable persistency, energy, and thought 
useless or unrewarded. This competent knowledge supplied 
him with the power to overcome Nature; for "Nature," as 
he used to say, " has a weak side, if we can only find it out." 
His hour of triumph came, and to 

' 'His sagacious mind, 
With faculty inventive rarely fraught," 

she communicated the inspiration which enabled him to 
knit together the engine's bones of steel and sinews of brass, 
to set in its heart a burning furnace, and to give it the hot 
breath of a new life, while he reserved to man the power of 
being the guiding soul of all its motions. "One Sunday 
afternoon," he says, " I had gone out to take a walk in the 
Green of Glasgow ; and when about half-way between Arn's 
well and the herd's house, my thoughts having been naturally 
turned to the experiments I had been engaged in for saving 



A Priceless Thought. 289 

heat in the cylinder, at that part of the road the idea 
occurred to me, that, as steam was an elastic vapour, it 
would expand, and rush into a previously exhausted space ; 
and that, if I were to produce a vacuum in a separate 
vessel, and open a communication between the steam in 
the cylinder and the exhausted vessel, such would be the 
consequence." This idea was alone wanting to the entire 
success of what Dr Neil Arnott calls "the king of ma- 
chines." The date of this flash of thought is stated to have 
been "the summer of 1765." 

A century, therefore, has only elapsed since the concep- 
tion of that mighty engine which has revolutionised human 
industry, and has compacted into "the days of the years" 
of each man's life the results and changes of steam's 
exhaustless energies, the advantages of the labours of those 
Anakim and Cyclops who have been made our fags and 
drudges, slaves and bondsmen. These huge leviathans of 
industry, which plod and toil, and tug and strain their great 
tireless limbs in our service, in all the multiform processes 
of labour, are the lineal progeny of that thought-born 
mechanism which "in the twinkling of an eye" converted 
the almost useless inventions, studies, and discoveries of 
many lives into available agencies for economical and expe- 
ditious manufacture, travelling, printing, &c, and added in 
a moment incalculable wealth to the world at large. Truly, 

" The value of a thought cannot be told ! " 

And there probably has never been one instant, in the long 
reach of past ages, when so much latent life was quickened 
into utility and wealth as that in which this single thought 
imparted the soul of motion to the mechanism of which 
James Watt was the inventor, and gave the gigantic skeleton 

T 



290 James Watt. 

that elastic life which thrills its pulseless but all-pliant limbs. 
Oh, the high-bounding feel of intellectual energy, the glow, 
the quiver and enchantment which the great spirit and busy 
heart of the "philosophical instrument maker to the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow" must have experienced, when that idea 
rushed from its lurking corner in the mind, and lit up the 
inanimate masses of the mine with life, and harnessed the 
matter of the clouds to an everlasting servitude ! 

The single central thought being now gained, it became 
the aim and purpose of Watt's life to work into a practical 
form the intellectual Frankenstein he had created, and to 
subdue to his ideal the almost incorrigible and very refrac- 
tory elements to be employed in the construction of the 
engine, in order that it might become applicable to the uses 
of daily life, and available in the ordinary operations and 
processes of the industries of the masses. He did not all 
at once succeed in wedding and welding the agencies of 
mechanism, and in amalgamating the ideal and the real. It 
was a long labour to inspirit the iron thews and the vapor- 
ous wanderers through immensity with his purpose, and 
incline them to work together in friendly simultaneity, that 
they might transform, raise, and ennoble the whole material 
existence of humanity, by accepting the drudgery of industry 
as their portion in the great manifoldness of exertion neces- 
sary to supply all human wants. Not all at once, or wholly 
by him, were the whims of the winds and the passionate 
rebelliousness of the sea, the freedom of the vapours, and 
the inert self-will of iron, overcome ; nor, though due to his 
early thought, was the whole sum of change which civilisa- 
tion in one century has undergone, the work of his intellect 
But he accomplished the subjugation of that one physical 
power from which commerce and industry draw their noblest 



Difficulties Overcome. 291 

forces; and to his persistent determination to succeed, 
science owes many of its marvels, art many of its grandest 
achievements, trade a multitude of improved processes, and 
commerce the means of nearly annihilating distance, and of 
almost overcoming time. 

Around the simplest steam-engine there ever circles a 
whole multitude of powers, self-willed and dangerous, but 
which have all been overcome and harmonised by the con- 
structive ingenuity of the maker. The laws of atmospheric 
pressure, of friction, of motion, of metallic production and 
power, of velocities and forces, of expansion and condensa- 
tion, of economisation of fuel, space, labour, and superin- 
tendence, of adaptative construction, of means, ends, causes, 
and effects, require to be provided for or against, and the 
mechanism brought into harmony with them all, as well as 
with the specific industrial purposes which led to its being 
conceived and made. 

The necessary inadequacy of any exposition of the nature 
and uses of Watt's engine, which can be given by any one 
except an adept who has long occupied himself in the study 
of the operations of that multiform mechanism, might restrain 
us from any attempt at a formal description of it. When, 
however, we remember that the distinct achievement of Watt 
was to bring the elastic force of the vapour of heated water 
directly and immediately into exercise as a source of power, 
we perceive that our present business is not to describe that 
exceedingly complex mystery of mechanism which now starts 
into thought at the mention of the steam-engine. That 
hard-working, sweatless monster, whose vibrating beams 
play at the pit-head, whose cranks turn the wheels of ships 
or locomotives, or set in motion the complicated mechanical 
contrivances of manufactories, or whose resounding pistons 



292 James Watt. 

clank in the great foundries of our day — wherein human wit 
has so armed the iron with wise power, that it seizes upon 
great masses of its smelted ore, squeezes it into plates, cuts 
it into ribands, or moulds it into almost any predetermined 
shape — that giant of the forge, the factory, the mine, the 
rail, and the ocean, that weariless coadjutor of humanity, is 
a highly-trained and cultured Caliban, compared with the 
engine to which Watt's early thought gave life. It had 
little of that recondite multiplicity of parts, processes, re- 
quirements, and capacities, which the steam-engine of our 
time displays. Reduced to the one distinguishing idea, it 
seems to us that it may be intelligibly represented in our 
minds as a strongly-compacted cylinder, in which a closely- 
fitted piston works by the alternate admission of steam above 
and below it, the said steam being supplied in any con- 
venient way from a suitable boiler, and the said piston being 
attached in any convenient way to the machinery which it is 
desirable should be set in motion. The contrivances requi- 
site to subdue and direct the vaporous energy, and the 
means by which it is adapted to impart its aid to man, are 
things apart from the ideal plan for bringing the force of 
steam to act as a direct source of power, and as a manage- 
able appliance wheresoever that power was required in any 
of the departments of industrial life, or in any of the arts or 
processes of civilisation. In order, however, to give due 
prominence to the mechanical side of the subject, we sub- 
join an authoritative abstract of the changes, and the modes 
of effecting them, which James Watt made in the passage 
from an atmospheric to that of a steam engine : — 

"The first and most important improvement of Watt's on the engine 
consisted in effecting the condensation in a separate vessel, termed the 
condenser, which communicated with the cylinder. This condenser 



The Steam-engine Explained. 293 

being filled with steam from the boiler at the same time with the 
cylinder, the jet of cold water, admitted into the former only, effected 
the condensation of the whole volume of steam, both of that in the 
cylinder as well as that in the condenser, in conformity with the well- 
known principle in physics, that an action originated in any part of a 
homogeneous fluid is almost instantaneously communicated throughout 
the mass. 

"To effect still farther the object of this separate condensation, Watt 
placed his condenser in a cistern, the temperature of which was kept 
constant by a fresh supply of cold water, brought from a well by a 
pump ; for otherwise the heat given out by the condensing steam would, 
by heating the vessel and the water surrounding it, have prevented the 
rapid or almost instantaneous condensation necessary to the efficient 
action of the engine. 

"To comprehend the necessity for a rapid condensation, it must be 
remembered that the effective power of the engine depends on the 
pressure on the piston, minus any resistance it encounters, and on 
the space through which it moves. If the steam could be instantly 
converted into water, and so, entirely removed, a perfect vacuum would 
be formed beneath the piston, in which case, there being no resistance 
from this source to overcome, a maximum of power would be obtained ; 
but if the condensation be slow, or only partial, since the piston will 
begin to move the instant there is any inequality in the pressure exerted 
on its opposite surfaces, its motion will be retarded, or the power 
diminished, by the resistance to compression offered by the uncondensed 
steam ; and although that resistance would tend to diminish as the con- 
densation proceeded, yet the space occupied by the steam diminishing 
in consequence of the descent of the piston in nearly the same propor- 
tion, the resistance would be nearly constant through the whole of that 
descent. 

" On the other hand, to maintain the temperature of the cylinder as 
high as possible, Watt at first cased it in wood to retard the radiation, 
and subsequently surrounded it by a second iron cylinder, admitting 
steam from the boiler between the two. This casing, or * jacket,' as it 
is termed, is not used in most modern engines made since Watt's time, 
and the effects of radiation from the surface of the cylinder are now 
chiefly guarded against, as much as possible, by keeping that surface 
bright and smooth. 

"The second of Watt's improvements on Newcomen's engine con- 
sisted in closing in the cylinder at top, the piston-rod being made to 



294 James Watt. 

pass through a cylindrical neck in the top, termed a stuffing-box, from 
the passage being rendered steam-tight by a stuffing of tow saturated 
with grease, which, by its lubrication, diminished the additional friction 
resulting from this arrangement. The object of this alteration was to 
admit of the elastic force of the steam being employed to impel the 
piston downwards, instead of atmospheric pressure ; for this purpose, 
the steam was admitted from the boiler above the piston at the same 
moment that the condensation took place in the condenser, the steam- 
passage being made double for the purpose, so that the communication 
with the condenser could be cut off when that with the cylinder was 
opened, alternately. When the piston-rod descended to the bottom of 
the cylinder, the counterpoise at the pump-rod raised it again, as in 
Newcomen's engine ; but to allow of this upward motion, it was neces- 
sary to remove the steam that was above the piston, and this was done 
by allowing it to pass under the piston, and into the condenser, through 
a passage opened at the proper instant for this purpose. Such is the 
general principle of Mr Watt's single-acting engine, which hence became 
a steam-engine, and was no longer an atmospheric one. 

"By a further improvement, the counterpoise at the pump-rod was 
done away with, which obviously had been so much added to the un- 
productive work of the engine, since this weight had to be raised in 
addition to that of the water. The upward stroke of the piston was 
now produced by admitting the steam below it, to act by its elasticity, 
as it had previously done above, when causing the piston to descend. 
Thus the engine became double-acting, and assumed that essential 
general principle which it has ever since maintained, although all the 
details of its construction have been improved upon by successive 
engineers. '* * 

Such is the briefest and most intelligible trustworthy ab- 
stract of Watt's early labours we have been able to find. It 
points to a very different state of matters from that which 
now exists, and which has been described by a competent 
authority in these terms, viz. : — " In the present perfect state 
of the engine, it appears almost a thing of intelligence. It 
regulates, with perfect accuracy and uniformity, the number 

* T. Bradley, article " Steam-Engine, in Penny Cyclopcedia, voL 
xxii., p. 475. 



Self -trust and Self-control. 295 

of its strokes in a given time, counting or recording them, 
moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock 
records the beats of its pendulum ; it regulates the quantity 
of steam admitted to work, the briskness of the fire, the 
supply of water to the boiler, the supply of coals to the fire ; 
it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to 
time and manner; it oils its joints; it takes out any air 
which may accidentally enter into parts which should be 
vacuous ; and when anything goes wrong which it cannot of 
itself rectify, it warns its attendants by ringing a bell ; yet, 
with all these talents and qualities, and even when exerting 
the power of six hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand 
of a child ; its aliment is coal, wood, charcoal, or other 
combustibles ; it consumes none while idle ; it never tires, 
and wants no sleep ; it is not subject to malady when ori- 
ginally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out 
with age ; it is equally active in all climates, and will do 
work of any kind." * 

Though "Truth had wedded Power" in Watt's thoughtful 
scheme, and incalculable capabilities of enrichment and 
enfranchisement from merely, or chiefly, bodily toil lay in 
his felicitous contrivance, yet great difficulties stood in the 
way of the practical application of its latent potencies to 
the economic and industrial arts. Watt was poor, but 
cautious. He would not willingly trust himself to the 
money-lenders. There was a sturdy honesty in him, too, 
which withheld him from exceeding his own means, and 
a self-control which tempered the glow of the inventor's 
enthusiasm to a moderate but patient hopefulness. The 
care-born instrument, instinct with mind, was laid aside in a 

* Dr Neil Arnott's " Elements of Physics, &c.," 4th edition, vol. i., 
p. 384. 



296 James Watt. 

delft-ware manufactory at the Broomielaw — the name then 
given to the city portion of the north bank of the Clyde — 
while he, feeling the inroad his devotion to its construction 
had made on his business-income, employed himself in 
sundry ways, congenial enough to his own mind, though not 
strictly cognate to his profession, accepting, indeed, any 
occupation likely to afford him a settled way of providing 
for the necessities of home. Still his thoughts could not 
be entirely withdrawn from the unexampled motive-power 
which lay rusting unused, while he was labouring merely to 
be able to pay all his debts. Dr Black had introduced him 
to Dr Roebuck, (born in Sheffield, 17 18,) then proprietor of 
Carron Iron-works, two miles north-west of Falkirk, and resi- 
dent at Kinneil House, on the banks of the Frith of Forth, 
near Borrowstounness, about five miles distantfrom the works. 
Roebuck, in planning the Carron Works, had employed 
John Smeaton, (born at Austhorpe, near Leeds, 1724,) who 
had, like Watt, been in early life a philosophical instrument 
maker. One of the great schemes of Roebuck was to use 
pit instead of char coal in the manufacture of iron, for 
which purpose he had leased the Duke of Hamilton's coal 
mines, in the vicinity of Borrowstounness. The depth of 
the coal seams, however, had made him almost hopeless of 
success, when he was introduced to the only man who 
could, at that time, " sell power." He made overtures of 
assistance to Watt, and thereafter became interested in the 
progress of the invention. During 1765-6 an unreserved 
intercourse on the subject was maintained between the two, 
personally and by letter. Watt experimented at Kinneil 
House, and Roebuck made the materials for models and 
machines at Carron. But, in 1766, symptoms of an on- 
coming " paralysis of poverty " began to manifest themselves 



The Edge of Stic cess. 297 

in the affairs of the Carron projector, and fortune deserted 
Roebuck, and, therefore, Watt. Amid care, and the torture 
of a consciousness that there was within their grasp a real 
means of enrichment, more potent than the fabled charm 
of the alchemist, and of realising a wealth beyond the 
dreams of misers, they struggled on, downcast in spirit, 
against a sea of troubles. 

The success of Smeaton as a a civil engineer," — a title 
which he was the first to adopt as a professional designation, 
—encouraged Watt to follow his example, and relinquish the 
making of mathematical instruments, &c, for their use. In 
1767 he surveyed a route for a canal to unite the Friths of 
Forth and Clyde, to pass through the Leven, Loch Lomond, 
Endrick, &c, into the Forth, above Stirling. Smeaton's 
plan of joining the seas of the east and west of Scotland 
by Denny and Carron was preferred, and was in great part 
executed under his direction. In Watt's journey to London, 
to be examined before Parliament on the rival schemes, he 
made the acquaintance of Dr Erasmus Darwin, the inge- 
nious, fanciful, and philosophical poet, then resident at 
Lichfield, and full of interest regarding the inventions with 
which Earnshaw, Wyatt, Kay, Hargreaves, Paul Arkwright, 
&c, were at that time busy, to subdue " the nymph Gos- 
sypiaP To him Watt disclosed the secret of his engine. 
On this journey, too, probably at Dr Darwin's suggestion, 
he first saw that marvel of human ingenuity, the manufac- 
tory at Soho; through which he was shown by Dr Wm. 
Small, with whom he had had some conversation regarding 
his machine. Through this interview, the non-success of 
his canal scheme became the means of making the king- 
thought of the age available for his own advantage and the 
benefit of others. 



298 James Watt. 

By May 1768, Roebuck and Watt had arranged to take 
out a patent ; and the latter went to London in August, to 
make the necessary arrangements. Mr Boulton invited him 
to Soho. Here he stayed a fortnight Dr Darwin, Dr 
Small, Mr Keir, translator of the " Chemistry" of the Scoto- 
French philosopher, J. P. Macquer, and others who had 
been asked, met him there. The chief topic of conversation 
was the new fire-engine, in which, after full explanations, 
Mr Boulton expressed a desire to be " concerned." Watt's 
engagements with Roebuck prevented him from closing with 
this offer ; but on his return to Scotland, he wrote a state- 
ment to Mr Boulton, explaining his position thus : " By 
several unsuccessful projects and expensive experiments, I 
had involved myself in a considerable debt before I had 
brought the theory of the fire-engine to its present state. 
About three years ago, a gentleman [Mr John Craig] who 
was concerned with me, died. As I had, at that time, con- 
ceived a very clear idea of my present improvements, and 
had even made some trial of them, though not so satisfactory 
as has been done since, Dr Roebuck agreed to take my debts 
upon him, and to lay out whatever more money was neces- 
sary, either for experiments or securing the invention ; for 
which cause I made over to him two-thirds of the property 
of the invention. The debts and expenses are now about 
^1200. ... It gave me great joy when you seemed to 
think so favourably of our scheme as to wish to engage in 
it. I therefore made it my business, as soon as I got home, 
to wait on the Doctor, and propose you as one I wished he 
would make an offer to, which he agreed to with a great deal 
of pleasure." Mr Boulton declined becoming a partner in 
the affair on the terms proposed by Dr Roebuck, and 
u held off." Hemmed in by want, and pressed with care, 



The Witlessness of Selfishness. 299 

Watt still persisted in his design, and at length, on January 
5th, 1769, a patent was granted for "a new method of 
lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire-engines" 

Dr Roebuck could advance no money, and Watt was 
indebted to the voluntary offer of Dr Black for the means 
of paying the incidental expenses of gaining this patent. 
Mr Boulton and Dr Small assisted him in drawing out a 
draft of the specification for his patent — the former, in 
explanation of his hesitancy as to partnership, saying, in a 
letter to Watt, "I was excited by two objects to offer you 
my assistance, which were, love of you, and love of a 
money-getting, ingenious project ;" and entering into de- 
tailed reasons for resiling. Dr Roebuck shortly afterwards 
made a more agreeable offer ; but, while negotiations were 
yet pending through Watt, he became insolvent, and the 
creditors of the Carron Iron-works, &c, having declared 
that they did not "value the engine at a farthing," a 
transfer from Carron to Soho became easier. 

In the meantime, bread required to be earned, and Watt 
made a survey of the canal from the Monkland collieries to 
the city of Glasgow, nearly twelve miles, for which he after- 
wards became the engineer, at a salary of ^'200 per annum. 
In 1770 he was engaged by the trustees for the estates 
forfeited by attainder in the rebellions of 17 15 and 1745, 
to survey a canal between Coupar- Angus and Perth. He 
planned, in the same year, a bridge over the Clyde at 
Hamilton, and, at the desire of the magistrates of Glasgow, 
surveyed and reported on the state of that grand river. 
Other engagements of a similar nature filled up the doubt- 
distracted years 1770-73, of which the following may be 
mentioned : — A report on the best means of improving the 
harbour of Ayr; courses for canals through Crinan and 



300 James Watt. 

Tarbet, from Hurlet to Paisley, and from Inverness to the 
western sea (now known as the Caledonian Canal;) the 
clearing and rendering navigable the channels of the Leven, 
Forth, Gadie, Devon, &c.; the supplying of Greenock with 
water; and the construction of docks and harbours at 
Port Glasgow. 

While absent on his survey of the Caledonian Canal route, 
he received notice of his wife's illness, and on hurrying 
home, found that she was dead. A son and a daughter 
survived her. The sadness of death made the miseries of 
life more perplexing, and the griefs and harassments of the 
few preceding years, heightened by this latest stroke of 
fortune's spite, made him heart-sick and unmanned ; for 
"Sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier da>s." 
He longed to leave the land of his disappointments and 
wretchedness — "to try England, or to endeavour to get 
some lucrative place abroad/' 

It was just at this time that the insolvency of Roebuck 
enabled Watt to enter into terms with Mr Boulton, and so 
to inspire his long-cherished ideal with a life and movement 
which made it practically useful, while it enabled him to ex- 
ercise his own kill-care receipt — " Come, my dear sir, and 
immerse yourself in this sea of business as soon as possible, 
and do not add to the grief of your friends by giving way to 
the tide of sorrow. " How great a relief this was to his 

" Prone brow, 
Oppressive with, its mind," 

may partly be guessed from his plaintive expression of vexa- 
tion in March 1770, "It is a damned thing for a man to 
have his all hanging by a single string. If I had the where- 
withal to pay the loss, I don't think I should so much fear 







" A son and daughter survived her. The sadness of death made the 
miseries of life more perplexing." — Epoch Men, Page 300. 



Patents and Patent-laws. 301 

a failure ; but I cannot bear the thought of other people 
being losers by my schemes, and I have the happy disposi- 
tion of always painting the worst." The great sorrow of his 
life was tempered to him, as we have seen, by the open- 
ing up of new hopes, opportunities, business, &c, while a 
" daylight " of success beamed on his prospects. Boulton 
arranged with Roebuck for the transference of his share in 
the undertaking • the latter and Watt signed a mutual dis- 
charge ; while the former and he entered into a fresh co- 
partnery. 

In 1774, Watt removed to Soho ; in 1775, application 
was made for an Act of Parliament extending the previous 
patent, and this application, notwithstanding the opposition 
of the famous Edmund Burke, was granted in May of the 
same year, thus " vesting the property of the new engines 
in him and his assigns throughout Great Britain and the 
Plantations for twenty-five years to come." Of course, it 
was only gained after a strenuous opposition from the 
miners and engineers whom it would restrain from the use 
of the machine, unless purchased from the firm of Boulton 
and Watt. 

At the Soho manufactory machinery was constructed, and 
workmen were trained to make the various portions of the 
engine, and great precision, accuracy, and fitness of part to 
part was rapidly attained. The use of the engine extended, 
and its adaptations were multiplied. This extensive demand 
induced piracy, and to defend themselves against that, the 
firm entered the law-courts with great determination, and 
were uniformly successful ; yet so numerous were the 
evasions practised, that Watt once wrote, " I have been so 
beset with plagiaries, that if I had not a very distinct recol- 
lection of my doing it, their impudent assertions would lead 



302 James Watt. 

me to doubt whether I was the author of any improvement 
on the steam-engine." The fame of the contrivance spread, 
and it was looked upon as a boon in various parts of the 
country. Indeed, negotiations were early opened to accom- 
plish, by its aid, what Paris yet very much requires — an 
adequate supply of water. Its earliest applications, how- 
ever, were made in the mining districts, where it speedily 
supplanted Newcomen's engine, and gave a new impulse to 
the mining interests, which were all but stagnant and 
stationary. 

This cheapened power of which the world had so much 
need, revived old mines, caused new ones to be opened, and 
enabled those then working to yield a profit handsome 
enough to promote enterprise. This was especially the case 
in Cornwall and other places where fuel was scarce ; and as 
the price charged by the patentees was only " a third part 
of the value of the coal saved by the new engine," its use 
extended as its cheapness became manifest. Yet so great 
were the difficulties of bringing the steam-engine into 
general and active use, that the firm of Boulton and Watt 
had expended ^47,000 before they began to gain any re- 
turn for their outlay, skill, labour, and enterprise. Such are 
the risks the benefactors of their country require to run be- 
fore the spirit of custom yields to the genius of civilisation, 
and before the resistance of ignorance and selfishness is 
overcome. Moral, like physical power, requires not only 
to be generated but applied, and to be so applied as to 
assume the form of force. It was chiefly the fortunate con- 
junction of the appreciative minds of Roebuck, in the first 
instance, and of Small and Boulton in the second, that the 
mighty inventive genius of Watt was freed from the presence 
of those external cares and daily-life difficulties which would 



Steam Applied to Mamtfac hires. 303 

otherwise have consumed his days in the mere provision of 
home-income, and would have deprived the world of the 
readiest, cheapest, and most obedient of servants in every 
walk of industry. 

Other manufactures had reached a point of development 
when the application of a new species of power had become 
desirable. The draining-engine in mines relieved the me- 
tallic arts of their great repressive influence — expense ; but 
the fictile and textile industries had need, too, of some 
economic power. Speed was the great need, for on speed 
of production depended the profitable employment of 
capital, and the capacity to pay labour. Dearness was 
dearth. Only by small profits on many articles rapidly 
made, and suitable for general use, could the due relations 
of income and purchase, outlay and gain, be maintained. 
All arts had been employed to heighten the rate of produc- 
tion, cheapen its cost, and quicken into dexterity, by the 
division of labour, the working staff of our factories. The 
touch of a new agent was urgently required — and this chiefly 
in the cotton districts. There — 

" First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull 
From leathery pods the vegetable wool ; 
With wiry teeth revolving cards release 
The tangled knots, and smooth the ravell'd fleece. 
Next comes the iron-hand, with fingers fine, 
Combs the wide card, and forms the eternal line. 
Slow, with soft lips, the whirling can acquires 
The tender skeins, and wraps in rising spires. 
"With quickened pace successive rollers move, 
And these retain, and these extend the rove. 
Then fly the spokes, the rapid axles glow, 
While slowly circumvolves the labouring wheel below." 

To this slowly circumvolving wheel Watt could impart 
power and speed, but it required more than these two — 



304 James Watt. 

regularity of action. He had created power, but he had not 
regulated the pulses of that vigorous vitality which he had 
injected into the inanimate metals of which his engines were 
formed; and he stooped again over the rude thewed Samson, 
and at length tamed and trained him into trustworthiness. 
The principles on which the engine acted, and the skill with 
which it was now endowed, made it easily adaptable to the 
machinery of the industrial arts ; and in the very act of 
fitting them together, fresh aptitudes and new powers were 
manifested in each, and an interchanging series of progres- 
sive improvements was begun, not yet exhausted, if exhaus- 
tible. 

Many attempts were made to pirate his inventions, or to 
evade the protective Act which Parliament had granted him; 
and though he shrank from paper wars, controversies, and 
law-suits, Watt had occasion often to claim the strong hand 
of justice to maintain and defend his right. While he readily 
and honourably acknowledged the efforts of co-labourers in 
similar pursuits, he resolutely opposed the dishonest appro- 
priators of the schemes of his ingenious, contriving mind, 
patiently refuted their claims, or perseveringly exposed the 
knavery by which they sought to profit by a disingenuous 
employment of his projects and inventions. 

In 1775, Mr Watt, after two years of a widower's life, felt 
it necessary to lighten his family cares by a second marriage, 
and then wedded Anne Macgregor, the daughter of a 
wealthy and influential merchant and manufacturer in 
Glasgow. In that year, too, the Imperial Government of 
Russia offered him employment at a salary of ^1000 per 
annum. This, however, he declined. In 1778, the King 
of France granted an exclusive privilege to the Soho manu- 
facturers, to make and sell engines for that country. Though 



The Growth of Thought. 305 

resident in Birmingham, Watt required to superintend the 
introduction of his machinery throughout the country, and 
hence was brought into contact with many of those whose 
wants in machinery were urgent, and this doubtlessly set his 
mind more eagerly on modifying his engine to meet the 
extended requirements of the country. The mere mention 
of the patents he secured and worked out, with a note of 
their aim, will abundantly show the activity and inventive 
capacity of his intellect : — in 1 781, for a regulator, and the sun 
and planet wheel; in 1782, for an expansive engine, six 
contrivances for regulating motion, a double stroke engine, 
parallel motion, double cylinders, semi-rotative engine, and 
steam wheel; in 1784, for a rotative engine, parallel 
motions, working hammers, improved gearing and working 
the valves, portable engines, and steam carriages; in 1785, 
for constructing furnaces and consuming smoke. Besides 
these, he supplied a steam and condensation gauge, an 
indicator, and a governor. 

It would be vain for us to attempt to explain the uses 
and adaptations, the savings, applications, and arrangements 
of which the steam-engine thus became capable. By twenty 
years' studious thought and persevering labour Watt had 
succeeded in creating a new source of power, and had con- 
trived many invaluable means of distributing it usefully, 
wheresoever and howsoever the industrial arts demanded; 
and the clumsy, intractable, snorting, asthmatic, v/eak, 
atmospheric engine, of which he saw the model in 1763, 
had been, by the steady development of that idea which 
flashed upon his mind in 1765, transformed into a docile, 
compact, serviceable machine — resistless as a whirlwind, 
yet obedient as a planet to its laws — capable of adding its 

u 



306 James Watt. 

intense energy to every branch of manufacturing activity — 
a veritable steam-engine. 

In 1786 Boulton and Watt were invited by the French 
Government to Paris, and there met the chief savans of 
that empire, Lavoisier, La Place, Monge, Fourcroy, Ber- 
thollet, the last of whom revealed to Watt, who was a 
well-informed man and a fair chemist, the bleaching proper- 
ties of chlorine ; and he, by communicating that discovery 
to his father-in-law, was the first to promote the improvement 
of bleaching in Britain. For Mr Macgregor he also invented 
a steam-drying apparatus, which materially aided the manu- 
facturers, the calico printers, and bleachers of cotton and 
linen fabrics in this country, to produce speedily and sell 
cheaply. 

Watt's mind had such a bent towards invention, that he 
found not occupation only, but amusement also, in contri- 
vances and discoveries. In 1780 he patented a machine for 
copying letters, drawings, &c; in 1783 he communicated to 
Priestley and De Luc the discovery of the composition of 
water; and in 1784 his letter to the latter was read before 
the Royal [Philosophical] Society, after which he was chosen 
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He had a 
like honour conferred upon him, in 1785, by the Royal 
Society, in London ; and two years thereafter was elected a 
corresponding member of the Batavian Society. In 1806 
the honorary degree of LL.D. was voted to him by the 
University of Glasgow ; and ten years later he was made a 
member of the National Institute of France. 

In the year 1800 he retired from the Soho manufactory, 
with a more than handsome competence, and transferred 
his interest in it to his two sons, James and Gregory — the 



The Habit of Invention. 307 

latter of whom, however, died of consumption in 1804. 
This was the beginning of a series of afflicting deaths, in 
rapid succession, of persons dearly beloved by Watt — fore- 
warnings of the inevitable visitant to every man. Every 
one feels the loneliness of age, when companions and friends 
are taken away. So, when Dr Roebuck, in 1794; Dr 
Black and William Withering, (the botanist,) in 1799; Dr 
Darwin, in 1802; Professor Robinson, in 1805; Dr Bed- 
dowes, in 1808; Mr Boulton, in 1809; Dr P. Wilson, in 
181 1 ; De Luc, in 1817, passed away, Watt felt as if "in 
danger of standing alone among strangers/' and was sad- 
dened by the thought. 

But invention had then almost grown from a habit to an 
instinct. He had, in 1787, practised four new methods of 
making lamps, the secrets of which he imparted to Argand ; 
in 1788 he constructed an instrument for measuring the 
specific gravity of liquids ; in 1789 he found out a way to 
make tubes of elastic resin without dissolving it. His 
thoughts were often engaged in contemplating the applica- 
tion of steam to navigation, and the construction of a steam- 
chaise; he had, in 1786, a wheel carriage a of some size 
under hand," and expressed himself as at that time " resolved 
to try if God would work a miracle in favour of these 
carriages." But the hour of such a development had not 
come, and the true flash of inventive thought on this matter 
was reserved for one who, then but a boy, was acting as 
cowherd to widow Ainsley, on the farm of Dewley, and 
Watt had died before the rail and wheel had been induced 
by George Stephenson to enter into wedded life as " man 
and wife." 

In 1785 he turned some of his "idle thoughts" to the 



308 James Watt. 

making of an arithmetical machine, capable of performing 
the processes of multiplication and division; in 1791 he 
produced an artificial alabaster, almost as hard and as tran- 
sparent as marble ; between 1 802-11 he was amusing himself 
with constructing a likeness-lathe for copying sculptures, 
&c, and some specimens of the work it achieved were 
distributed among the mechanist's friends as " the produc- 
tions of a young artist, just entering on his eighty-third 
year," thus leading the way to the mechanico-glyptic 
processes of Bute, Collas, Cheverton, &c. 

In 1789 Watt bought a small estate, named Heathfield, 
of about forty acres of poor land, with a house on it, in 
Staffordshire, but in the neighbourhood of Soho and Bir- 
mingham, by proximity to which it acquired value in his 
eyes. In consequence of this property qualification he was 
summoned, in 1803, to undertake the burdensome honour of 
the shrievalty, but resisted, and was released from the duty 
of serving. He also, in his later years, purchased property 
in Brecon and Radnor, on the margin of the Ython and 
" the sylvan Wye," pitching his home tent at the farmhouse 
of Doldowlod ; and, as resident there, he was summoned to 
act as sheriff of the latter county, but again successfully 
resisted. In these two homes he collected round him the 
familiar furniture and friends of e very-day life ; in them he 
spent his studious hours, his seasons of social intercourse, 
his long, lapsing, delightful fits of novel reading ; in them 
he pursued his inventive amusements, and his passion for 
horticulture and the raising of fruit ; in them he was mildly 
subject to " the assiduous legislation of Mrs Watt," by whose 
kindly but imperative methodicality and decision he, with a 
few occasional but short-lived and good-natured attempts at 



The Way to Ditsty Death. 309 

rebellion, especially in the matters of late hours and snuff, 
suffered himself to be ruled and overruled. He slept long 
and late, walked about modestly, amused himself simply, 
lived frugally, read much, thought much, spoke gravely, but 
with a spice of dry humour, was impressive in his manners, 
attractive in conversation, and much given to salient anec- 
dote and sly fun. 

James Watt, who in boyhood was an almost constant 
sufferer from pain, and whose days in manhood's prime 
were seldom free from ailments, grew in his old age stronger 
and healthier. For many years he enjoyed immunity from 
sickness, but in the autum of 18 19 he became ill. Devoutly 
recognising the unspairing messenger, he felt ready for the 
solemnest event of existence — Death. On the 19th August 
he expired at Heathfield, in calm, unsorrowing hope in God ; 
and a thinker less was on the earth. He was interred in the 
parish church of Handsworth, near the remains of his help- 
fellow and friend, Matthew Boulton, and over his tomb a 
memorial sculpture, from the chisel of Chantrey, preserves 
for posterity the outward semblance of the utiliser of one 
of the most gigantic energies of nature — a force so mighty, 
that it already supplies a labour-power nearly equal to that 
provided by the strength of 500,000,000 men, and so econo- 
mical, that an equivalent force to that expended by a man 
during a long day's work can be produced at a cost of less 
than a farthing. From so much drudgery, then, does it exempt 
man, or the animals which man would otherwise employ in 
industries ; so much food as would be required for the 
agents of such immense labours it releases for other pur- 
poses ; and it leaves to mankind and his living helpers the 
vegetable products of the soil for their sustenance ; while it 



310 James Watt. 

moves its huge metal limbs, and gathers the nutriment of 
the gigantic force which all but vitalises it, from the great 
coal-fields of the earth ; besides, by its speed of movement 
and its little cost, it cheapens commodities, and so increases 
the entire sum of human comforts. 

Yet all this has been the result of one thought flashed by- 
Providence into a fit recipient soul, and thereafter perse- 
veringly outworked by a struggling thinker, plodding slowly 
on to the accomplishment of his great ends, and at last 
succeeding in placing within man's grasp a power that may 
be yoked to the cotton mill, the mine, the forge, the pottery, 
the printing-press, the railway carriage, the mighty merchant- 
man, in unresisting subservience. So great is thought— so 
glorious the endowment placed within, and forming the 
being of each individual of the race of man — so singularly 
fertile in ingenuity is that unique Reason with which God 
has blessed humanity, that inborn activity and motive-power 
♦vhich has been bestowed upon us that we might "subdue" 
nature. There is surely no argument for the glory of 
humanity so potent as this of the might that resides in these 
very minds of ours, and enables them to rule over the 
energies, forces, and powers of earth, ocean, and air. But 
if this be a demonstration of the incalculable worth and 
preciousness of thought, and of the soul, in which thoughts 
are begotten, how great is the condemnation it brings 
against those who neglect the culture of the capacities by 
which human life is so heightened and brightened, civilisa- 
tion so aided, and man so much more released from the 
anxieties connected with his sustenance and comfort. In 
every point of view thought is power — a power always best 



Estimate of His Character. 311 

used and applied in submission to its own and Nature's 
laws. 

Lord Francis Jeffrey, Watt's friend the Edinburgh Re- 
viewer, has so eloquently descanted on the life, labours, and 
character of " the great improver of the steam-engine ; but in 
truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in 
its utility, ... its inventor" in words so well and so 
widely known, that we forbear to quote the exquisite phrases 
of a eulogy as lofty in language as it is accurate in fact ; — 
Sir Walter Scott, in the Introduction to the " Monastery," 
has pictured him so well and so lovingly, as he saw him 
once, in 181 7, on a visit to his native country; — Lord 
Brougham, in a work to which we have already referred, 
has noted the prominent characteristics of his public labours 
and his private life so carefully and elaborately ; — Arago's 
Eloge is so ornate and fascinating ; — Muirhead's " Life of 
James Watt" is so full, though so dull, disjointed, and dis- 
orderly ; — the speeches delivered by the most eminent men 
of the time in civic, political, scientific, and artistic circles, 
at the meeting held in London, June 1824, when a monu- 
ment in Westminster Abbey was voted to the chief inventor 
of the age ; and many other publications, — have so illus- 
trated the various and varied phases of his intellectual life, 
that we cannot compass here even an abridgment of their 
numerous excellencies ; nor do we feel that our space can 
allow of a selection from these able materials, so widely 
attainable. Almost every point has been touched with a 
pencil of light in the monumental inscription written by 
Lord Brougham for the statue in Westminster Abbey, 
which is as follows : — 



312 James Watt. 



Not to perpetuate a Name 

Which must endure while the peaceful Arts flourish 

But to show 

That mankind have learned to honour those 

Who best deserve their gratitude 

The King 

His Ministers and many of the Nobles 

And Commons of the Realm 

Raised this Monument to 

JAMES WATT 

Who directing the force of an original genius 

Early exercised in philosophic research 

To the improvement of the 

Steam-engine 

Enlarged the resources of his country 

Increased the power of man 

And rose to an eminent place 

Among the most illustrious followers of Science 

And the real benefactors of the world 



THE END. 



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AND SOLD BY 


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A Treasury of Table 
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SPIRITUALISM: 

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